Of Dominater and Bonding
by Yngvildr the Voracious
Summary: The Chantry makes them Tranquil because magic shall not rule over men. Tevinter glorifies and gives them right of life and death over the slave the Maker has gifted them with. Malcolm and Leandra don't believe any of their crap and raise their daughter Bethany as someone who won't take advantage of her power. Then Malcolm and Leto die and Leandra and Bethany are forever changed.
1. Chapter 1

For the sake of the story, Malcolm Hawke's death has occurred two years before canon. Other AU elements will be introduced.

As suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished.

It was a sunny day in Lothering, a perfect day for a funeral. However, if the whole family was grieving, Bethany felt like she was now spiralling down towards the depths of the Void. It had vanished. Just like that. It only left a weird aftertaste of mana in her tongue and a queasy feeling in her stomach.

The burning finally over, the last rites pronounced, Bethany was the first to bolt to their little farm on the outskirts of town. She was aiming for her parents' room. Well, her mother's room, now. She knew she had it still. The young girl dressed in black ransacked the place, turning cupboards upside down, using magic to make the bed levitate and sweep the dust from beneath it until she found what she was looking for underneath the bedside table.

The little hand mirror with flowers engraved in the pewter handle was broken in half, just like Bethany's heart. She undid her corset and the shirt beneath it and finally took a good look at the skin without having to crane her neck.

It was not only gone, it was burned out. The tiny silver letters that spelled "Leto" just above her heart was now a fine line that could have just meant she tattooed and then removed a shameful lover's name (that could have been called "Tits" if you didn't know what was there before…). How could it be gone? Why did it happen on this particular day? This question was so selfish, she thought. She was craving her father's counsel even more now than during the thirteen years she's known him. But Malcolm Hawke was dead now. Bethany cried until her mother came to find her room in a mess that was mirroring her daughter's distress.

Leandra Hawke, née Amell, was the most kind and supportive of women so, when she found out what had happened to her young daughter, she embraced her and hushed her until her tears dried. When the sun was set, Leandra finally showed her daughter the burned out letters above her heart that used to spell "Malcolm Hawke".

Bethany sighed. Two deaths in two days. Maker, why? Why? Why make her lose the two most important things in her whole life in two days?

Young, bright and beautiful Bethany shrivelled in her room, locked up and alone. Might as well go to the Circle, she sometimes thought. At least, her family could live a normal life. Nothing was waiting for her outside anymore.


	2. Chapter 2

She was a mage. This woman kept a mage on her heels, a pitiful little thing with jet black hair and big amber eyes that was following the blue eyed human like a puppy his master. Fenris sneered. It would be nice to exact such revenge to Danarius. An impossible fantasy, of course. Even broken and submissive, mages were doors to the Fade. Their mere existence put everyone at risk.

"You keep a viper in your midst." He told the woman.

"She's my sister, not vermin." She spat back, her lips curled in a snarl.

The other fighter took a defensive stance and her hand was dangerously close from her hand axe. The elf's keen sight also spied the girl trying to disappear behind her sister. However, the torch that the other woman in city guard armour held prevented her from finding enough shadows or sisters to cloak herself with. The fire made her irises glint as if they were made of liquid gold.

Fenris managed to set his stare back on the older of the two.

"I am sorry if I appear ungrateful. This could not be further from the truth. I know magic has its uses, I simply mistrust its users."

"From what I've heard from you and from my father, you have a lot of reasons. But Bethany is not a Magister."

Fenris' heart skipped a beat. Did he hear well? He knew his eyes looked like saucers and he struggled to remain calm. This meant nothing. They were Ferelden refugees. This was probably a common name in their country…

There, here finally came the calm numbness of not giving a single damn about these strange women. They were just some mercenary and her apostate sister trying to scrape some coin and he was about to pay them the very few he hadn't given to Anso already.

"Here is the payment I promised. I will remain in this house in case Danarius wants to claim it back. In the meantime, my blade is yours."

The axe wielding sister nodded. The red headed guard sighed and the dwarf opened his big mouth.

"Then pay us a visit at the Hangman, sometimes. Now come on, Hawkes, let's move."

It took all of Fenris' will not to run after them to grab the witch, tear her shirt apart and try to get a glimpse at the mark that probably adorned her bosom.

Late this night, an elf with stark white hair and silvery swirling tattoos removed his armour for the first time in many years of running away. There, the name of Bethany Hawke was faded on his breast, a scar covered with the carving on his flesh, burnt with raw liquid lyrium. On his right breast was another huge letter H carved more precisely, stylishly and adorned like a signature... These were the only letters he knew how to read, thanks to Hadriana's taunting. The basis of all the hasty learning of a man on the run.

Fenris sighed and looked at the disappointingly empty mansion. He lit up a fire in one of the rooms and took one of the items that had justified Anso's ridiculous fees.

The book had a title in which he recognized some letters. This was going to be a long night.


	3. Chapter 3

Marian didn't like this Fenris at all. Even a blind and deaf man could have seen that. She was still seething now. So much that Bethany couldn't sleep.

Not that it would have come to her easily anyway. When she closed her eyes, she still saw Carver's bulky form being shaken like a ragdoll by the ogre. The young girl absently rubbed her chest. No, that wouldn't do. She had to.

"Marian, would you please let me sleep?" she asked in a tiny voice.

Marian stopped tossing immediately and asked:

"Am I bothering you?"

Her voice was soft and caring. Bethany hated that her big sister was shackled to her, condemned to the shadows while she could have followed Aveline in the City Guard. Instead, she was a mercenary.

"Yes." Bethany whispered.

"I'm sorry"

The silence invaded the dark room and Bethany's head sunk a bit deeper into her pillow. But sleep now eluded her. She scolded herself.

"What?" Marian asked again.

"I can't sleep now. It's your entire fault." Bethany groaned as an answer.

"I'm… "

Marian stopped mid-sentence. She was going to say she was sorry again.

"Look, maybe we can grab something to eat that wasn't nibbled by rats and talk a little bit." She proposed instead.

Bethany sighed. After a few seconds of contemplation of the moldy ceiling of their uncle's shack, she sat up on her bed let herself fall on the floor.

Of course, there was nothing edible that wasn't marked with a date by their Mother, already eaten by rats or drunk by Gamlen. Since they were up and the sun wouldn't get up before several hours, Marian proposed that they visit the Hanged Man. After all, that was her place. Or Varric's. Or theirs. It was hard for Bethany to actually explain exactly what was going on in this alehouse most of the time. She just knew that Marian and Varric were always there drawing plans about their upcoming expedition to the Deep Roads. The young mage usually didn't go to these meetings.

It didn't take long to remember why she didn't really mind being excluded of such plans. The smell in the pub was horrible. People were drunk or passed out already, pools of vomit half absorbed by the sawdust on the ground were aggressing Bethany's nose. Marian yelled.

"Oi! Varric!"

And indeed the dwarf was trying to coax someone Bethany couldn't really see yet behind the large dwarf and his equally large crossbow, Bianca, into a game of Diamondback.

Marian's cheer affected her a bit though, because she was silently walking into her eager footsteps, carefully hiding in her large form inherited from their father. She sighed. Marian and Carver were much more alike than the latter ever wanted to admit. She missed her twin brother. He'd tease her about her Amell slender figure. She had their Father's golden eyes, though, with her magic, the only other legacy her managed to pass on. Carver and Marian had their mother's blue irises. The three children had been the very embodiment of the love of a young noblewoman promised to an Orlesian Comte and a Circle Mage originating from Ferelden, the land of the Dog Lords who defied Tevinter.

People tended to forget the muddy country made of moors and fields had also seen the Prophetess' birth.

As they approached, Marian started to talk with Varric. She made a sign with her head, but Bethany moved her head so her bangs fell before her eyes. She didn't want to be really seen. Not only because she was an apostate. In public, she was the weird and shy little sister and that suited her. She sat by Marian and made herself little, looking on the floor. She was used to it by now. There had been nothing worth watching ever since Father died. Ever since Leto died, she almost thought. Mummy had insisted she stopped thinking about it.

"So, what bring you here… And with Gloomy!"

Bethany scowled at him from underneath her bangs unsuccessfully. Varric always told her that depressive wasn't looking good on her, that she should go out in the sun every now and then and smile. He'd heard him tell Marian she looked like a wilted flower. Thankfully, Marian had not said anything clever about it.

"There's going to be too much bad vibrations in the air between you and Broody…"

Surprise overtook Bethany's hidden features. Broody?

"I do not brood." A deep voice snarls from behind cards.

Marian tenses imperceptibly. Bethany slumps further into her chair, but she is suddenly feeling curious. Why Broody? She shifted on her seat. Marian picked up on it, though.

"Then why call him Broody, if he doesn't brood? Why not Sexy Pout?"

"Come on, he drapes himself in it like a cape!" Varric snorted. "Women swoon at his feet. They'd have broody babies in his bloody honor!"

Marian laughed. Fenris was not amused. Bethany didn't know what to think except "I don't think I'm gloomy either!".

She almost said it out loud, but she couldn't. She wanted to go back to bed. She was tired. Tired of the raucous laughter and tired of seeing Varric attempting to… Well, lighten her mood a little, she guessed.

She was pretty sure Marian noticed she had slipped away. She didn't notice that Fenris had slipped away too and was watching her breathing a less stinking air. It took a while for her to realise that he was watching her and a while to remember why he was doing so.


	4. Chapter 4

There was something to her that made him feel… Strange. He felt his guard slip. He didn't feel the need to be ready to draw a weapon. She was a very sly thing, this Bethany Hawke, making herself look tiny, unimportant and invisible. Was this witchcraft or simply the life of a mage outside of the Circle in the southern lands that made her so… So transparent? So removed from life?

It intrigued him even more than her name. The only name he knew to read. The woman who held his true name on her own breast. Or so Hadriana said.

Thinking of her spoiled his mood instantly. His jaw was suddenly set and his teeth were grinding each other and he suddenly realised that the witch and the bitter fugitive had been staying there, immobile under the hanged man's statue and not quite staring at each other, for a while.

This was stupid. He could not ask this witch if she was indeed his Dominater. Not before he knew exactly what it was, and what it entailed outside of the Imperium. And even if she was the one he was supposed to serve for the rest of his life as the Tevinter custom wanted…

No, better not think about it. Fenris didn't have any luck with the book. Not that it surprised him. When one knew only nine letters in a whole alphabet and only a few of the sounds they made, they couldn't learn how to read complex words in one night, especially in a tome that was written by a scholar for his peers. He could trick her, like he had tricked his sister into helping him… But the way the elder Hawke was looking at him, he couldn't do it, not yet. Also, the title was explicit and might reveal exactly what he is looking for. Of Dominater and Bonding. So far, he had managed to read those four words. Another might have been glad to perform such a feat after a life of illiteracy, but Fenris was a busy man, one concerned with safety, survival and consumed by a will to know more that did not allow any place for patience. The night he spend trying to decipher the markings on the paper had left him frustrated, angry and tired.

What if he enrolled the aid of Varric Tethras? No, the man talked too much. He needed a plan to make this woman help her. Despite the fact that she was probably involved, she seemed much more malleable than her elder.

"When you told me that you'll be watching my sister, I didn't quite expect that." A snarky voice rang.

Marian Hawke was out of the alehouse, as if thinking about her had summoned the woman. She smelled a bit more of alcohol than upon entering the establishment. She was looking at Fenris as if he had offended her. It amused him.

"Now quit it, she's terrified."

Fenris looked at the little sister and saw the fear in her golden eyes. He sighed.

"My apologies." He said.

"No, I understand." She mumbled.

This was the first time he heard her voice.

There was no will beneath it. No malice, no happiness, nothing. But it tugged at his heart where the broken and patched up bond was lodged.

Fenris sighed and started to walk back to the mansion in Hightown. Another clue that made her his original Dominater, once he could actually read. This didn't felt as if she was casting a spell on him. The fact that her eyes never left the ground when she talked confirmed that. Hadriana's curse was getting in the way, though because if Bethany felt it, she didn't give any sign of it.

* * *

The sun was shining through the hole that was left unmended in the ceiling. Fenris did like to see the stars before going to sleep. He had awoken on his own, it seemed. No, not on his own. Someone was entering the mansion. It must be Hawke.

For the past few months, Hawke had often asked for his help in jobs. She always went with Varric to count the money, Isabela, the tavern wench, for lock picking and her sister, because she was very protective of her family. However, having an entourage of scoundrels and scrapers accompanied by squishy mages in robes or rags gave the axe wielding Fereldan a lot of work when fighting large groups. Since Aveline could not go on shady jobs anymore, that left Fenris to help draw the attention of those who thought they could take on Isabela in close quarters. Some of them might deserve mercy, after all.

He enjoyed it because he felt useful. However, all the merriment left when Marian Hawke brought her pet abomination along. Fenris had told her what he thought of it once only. It was the last time Marian took her sister on jobs that included Anders or Merrill. He thought it a very good idea.

Because Bethany was indeed nothing like a Magister. She was aware of the power she wielded, yet she was careful while using it and loathed to use it to hurt people, even if they deserved it by anyone's standards. She was very attached to her sister and she often smiled sadly when confronted to misery. And yet her own sadness was buried deep down in her, locked in a box she called heart, the key thrown in the sea or as Marian once drunkenly put it on a late night playing cards 'burnt on Dad's pyre. The Maker also pissed on it when Carver died'.

Fenris watched her grow, somehow. She was still a gloomy and aloof kind of person whenever she followed Marian at the Hanged Man, but on the job, she was focused and if she was discreet, she started to use it at her advantage. Isabela was not really a stranger to this change. The banter they exchanged put a smile on "Gloomy"'s lips that prompted Varric to change her nickname to Sunshine whenever the two women were together. It suited her. And Fenris preferred this girl to the naïve blood mage and the pushy abomination. Both would have been the most dangerous kind of Magisters, had they been born in another place.

It startled him to see that Marian had come alone. From Lowtown, she usually fetched many of their comrades in arms to get him last unless they went to Darktown next and she'd only just got Varric, Isabela and her sister.

But today, she was not accompanied. She nervously caressing the blade of the axe attached at her hip and waiting by the staircase that led to the upper floors.

"Hawke." He saluted.

"Fenris." She answered in kind. "Mind if we talk about something?"

Fenris gestured toward his 'living room' and she climbed the stairs. Once they were seated on the bench, she finally said:

"I won't bring my sister to the Deep Roads…"

"That is a wise decision, despite the need for distance from certain factions."

"I won't bring you either." She added.

"I suppose supplies will be scarce in the Deep Roads. Who will you bring?" he asked.

"Anders and Isabela. Varric is already on the list, but this is all I could squeeze in."

"I suppose you took Anders because of his Grey Warden expertise …"

It sounded like a good strategy, Fenris thought.

"And because we lacked a mage after I decided Bethany was not going…"

A small silence stretched between the two warriors. Fenris decided to fill it.

"You had already decided that before Bartrand gave you an excuse for it." He said.

It was an easy guess. It was the first news she had disclosed today and probably the reason why he came to see him. Did she trust him to keep her sister out of trouble?

"Indeed." She said. "I would like you to keep an eye on her… I know she can handle Templars and flee from angry mobs but that's hardly the only dangers an apostate has to face."

For the first time since they knew each other, Fenris finally saw the woman underneath the armour. The one that was responsible for her family.

"My father always entrusted me with her safety on his deathbed." She managed to say in a throaty voice. "He always meant for me to help her fight all the threats. He even let me train with the Templar recruits in Lothering to learn how to stop mages if Bethany ever forgot herself. But I probably won't be around for a month. Maybe two if something goes awry."

"I will watch her as I always did." Fenris said. "You need not worry about this."

Marian breathed deeply and carefully recomposed herself.

"I trust you to do the right thing, Fenris." She added. "This is not an invitation to turn her in or kill her for her own sake. I will know if any of your actions were not needed."

"I promise that I won't do anything to harm your sister unless she turns into an abomination right before my eyes." Fenris stated.

"Good."

When she left the mansion, Fenris went with her to say goodbye to Varric. Bethany was there too. She hugged her sister and retreated to the shadows when the gates closed behind her.

Fenris took a deep breath and called her name. This last minute discussion with Marian Hawke had made his plan easier to execute.


	5. Chapter 5

This mansion really needed some cleaning. Bethany decided to take note of it and ask Aveline (and maybe Merrill) for help later. The dead bodies, the rot, the barely concealed traps… All of this was another layer of armour to the dark elf behind her. How much must it have cost to ask for her help? It must have been really important to him. It may even be related to his former master pursuing him. Life or death. The uses of magic. Bethany sighed. She thought that he was at least way more honest than the Chantry. He didn't hide behind the Maker or Andraste. The hate and the distrust were fully his, not zealotry. You couldn't reason with zealots.

The room he led her in was at least cleaned of any broken glass or corpses. There were crumbs on the side and suspicious dark red stains that probably weren't wine, but it felt liveable. There was a bed underneath a big hole in the ceiling, a table and a bench beside it near a broken arm chair. Bethany's curiosity was piqued.

Does he really live here? Does he even take off his clothes to take a bath or is he too scared he's going to get attacked the very moment he let himself go?

He sets a big old book on the table and sits on the bench. Bethany gets closer. She reads the title and suddenly, emotions fills her heart.

She had to leave. This was a terrible idea. What if indeed his former master was after him? Would she risk to be killed, enslaved or enrolled by this monster? What if…

She can't let the title get out of her head and she realises that once her breathing has calmed down. Fenris is looking at her as if she hadn't almost completely fallen into a panic attack the second before.

Of Dominater and Bonding, it read. She never held the book for sure in her hands, but she knew her father had read it. She remembered it as if it was yesterday. It was the first time Father had arranged his day so he would spend it wholly with Bethany. Being a parent in such a large family, he had probably been so busy being happy for all his children, reassured that he wouldn't pass his curse onto his kids. Until it appeared.

She had felt her skin sting, as if it was suddenly burnt and she had cried like any six years old would have. She had gone to Mummy and had shown her the scar still reddish and stinging. Then Daddy had come home and they spent the whole day playing with balls of light. There were many games. Keep it alive to help her control. Hide quick to help her conceal. Be still to help her meditate. And he'd explained. Some mages, when they grew into power had a Bond. It used to mean something, but now it was lost. Something was sure, though: the two bounded person were linked forever until death parted them. It made her sad and happy at the same time, because that's how Mum and Dad found each other. Once they'd been close, they'd felt it though the bond. It had elated their hearts and prompted their elopement. Malcolm had been stronger for it, both morally and magically. Leandra had won next to nothing from the outside, but Mum had told her that she'd never been so happy than with Malcolm.

When the bond had broke, though, it had weakened her health. Even now, years after, she seemed to be aging faster, to waste away. Bethany had been expecting them both to die in the Blight. And yet, only Carver, who was so much stronger than them, succombed. Bethany saw little purpose left to her but the remains of her loving family. Gamlen somewhat included.

Fenris had continued to stack books on the table along with several pieces of parchment and even very expensive Orlesian paper. Beth realised that she had been holding Of Dominater and Bonding in her hands and she set it back on the table hurriedly as if it had suddenly grown teeth. Fenris' gaze was all over her, judging her, despising her. She couldn't bear it, but she had already offered her help. She started organising the papers. She didn't ask bother asking the elf for help. She had easily guessed why he had come to her. She had more common sense than Merrill when it came to dangerous magic and slaves probably weren't permitted to read… And if he learned, all these tomes and papers were probably beyond the level of a man who learned on the run for three years. She started with the books. At least, with books you only had a title to read. Some of them she didn't even need to, as the energy pouring off the pages even closed them prompted her to ask Fenris to take it to the fire without even touching them. The elf would gladly skewer them with a dagger and toss them into the hearth.

She didn't touch Of Dominater and Bonding. Curiosity was eating her, though. What did it exactly say to make so much mages defect the Circles to find their Adittus.

Bethany had been working with the books for a while now. Most of the day was gone and the light lunch made of sausages and bread Fenris brought didn't do much to her hungry stomach. There wasn't many books left that weren't already in a poor state and only one of those was cursed. Fenris tossed it to the flames and it hissed softly. Finally, there was an old folktale with huge illustrations meant for children that was not too moldy and could be mended and read again and Of Dominater and Bonding. Bethany sometimes wished she was brave like her sister or her late twin. This was one of those times. Especially given how Fenris' eyes narrowed, suspiciously. She felt all the blood flee from her face. She didn't like it when he stared at her like that, as if she was about to burst into flames. Thankfully, he had stopped to do it so often since the last time at the Hanged Man. Also, at the Hanged Man, there were people. Here, she was in his domain and Marian was probably near one of the Deep Road entrances she sought.

This scared her so much that she didn't even dare to ask to read a book. She rose and straightened up as much as she dared before mumbling something about finishing it up tomorrow.

Her heart was beating fast and hard as she all but ran down the flight of stairs until she heard her name being called again. She stopped in her tracks.

"This is the last book, Bethany." he said, his voice about to voice a question. "The sight of it seemed to upset you, yet you haven't called for its destruction."

Bethany swallowed a big gulp of air. She needed to leave. She couldn't tear her eyes from the elf though. For the first time she saw him. She saw the way he tried to make himself smaller, how his hands were loosely hanging on his sides, his demeanor relaxed. It was as if he was trying to tame a wild beast. Did she look so deranged or dangerous?

"Bethany?" he asked again.

"Don't destroy it." she whispered hurriedly. "Please."

And suddenly it was pouring out of her mouth. Her father, the book written by a Tevinter researcher before the time of Andraste, the legends, the sin in the eyes of the Maker of ruling over men…

"It's the very first form of Blood Magic," she rambled. "except that it made two completely unrelated people siblings through the Fade and wasn't at all nefarious, or so my father told me. Sometimes after the Circles were founded, most mages left to find their soulmates so when the Chantry definitely took control of it, they used the ban against Blood Magic and the Canticle of Transfiguration chapter one verse two to make them loathe it, burnt every copy of the book they could find. Some people managed to save it, mostly through oral tradition. Dad seemed to think it had been banned in Tevinter too, though he didn't know the reasons. I..."

She took a deep breath. Fenris was looking at her strangely.

"Please, I need to know. Don't destroy it." she whispered.

She felt almost humiliated. What if in fact Danarius was his Dominater? Was this the kind of abuse Dad had always warned her about. It would be tempting when near her Adittus to take advantage of the situation, but Of Dominater and Bonding was a book about scientifical study of the Bonding in tribes and peoples from a lot of different places and written at a different time. Malcolm and Leandra also found love.

Do not prove the Chantry correct, Bethy. When you find this Leto, be the kindest person Thedas ever saw. Your magic will serve what is best in you and him, not that which is most base.

Bethany shivered. She wanted to shake Fenris until the book fell into her hands. That was hardly magic, but it was not what was best in her. She shook the impatience out of her instead and took a deep breath to calm herself. She had asked nicely. It was up to him, now.


	6. Chapter 6

Fenris was unsure of how to proceed now. She was begging for the book. She had told him of all the implications of a mage becoming Dominater to a man in these lands and how it was frowned upon as it should. He thought about how he could have her strip now and then if only he'd just promise to exchange the examination of her left breast with the book. This made his mouth go wet and bitter with bile and half digested sausages.

He threw the book to her feet and turned around to leave the room. He could not bear to be with her tonight.

Aveline bursting into the mansion made him reach for his weapon always strapped at his back and Bethany reach for a dagger at her belt. The Guard Captain looked alarmed and worried. Her features softened when she saw Bethany.

"You're there, thank the Maker!" Aveline bursted out, relieved.

She caught Bethany by the shoulders and hugged her tightly. Fenris could see the mage had no clue of what was going on.

"Templars were at Gamlen's while he was nursing his hangover in the drunk tank." the red head said. "I think they might be onto you."

Bethany had not been a good mood before, mostly by his fault, but now her golden eyes were on the verge of tears. Templars were after her and here she was: an apostate holding a banned book and branded as a Dominater. Something sinister suddenly altered her beautiful face. A shadow that made her look like an old woman. Fenris' bond tingled again from behind this cloud Hadriana had put on him. The two woman didn't seem to notice his sudden scowl. In fact, Bethany was lost in her thoughts. She seemed to be formulating a plan of sorts.

"Maybe…" she whispered. "I mean, Gamlen will probably rat me out now that they knocked on his door. Maybe if I turn myself in they'll kill me quickly..."

"Don't even think about it, Bethany!" Aveline firmly put, squeezing the young woman. "We're going to protect you."

"But…" Bethany protested. "You're not even of my blood. I… No. You can't risk your position. I'll… I will turn myself in." she finally stated, clearing herself from Aveline's hug.

She turned around toward Fenris to give him the book.

Fenris didn't know what to think. She was thinking of turning herself in? Disbelief had him staring at the woman hidden beneath her black hair in disbelief. Even though she knew that she was going to be killed, or worse made Tranquil for some twist of fate?

He folded his arms onto his chest. He could not take this book back. He had waited all day for her to read it and spill its contents, he wasn't about to abandon now nor would he turn her in to the Templars, now that he knew they'd destroy the book he had payed Anso so much to acquire. He also made a promise to Marian Hawke and he prided himself with his honesty. Bethany softly let the book down on the floor and Fenris took hold of her shoulder as she stood up.

"You won't turn yourself in." he said.

"They will soon be finished with Lowtown." Aveline said. "Nothing guarantees us they won't be searching Hightown, especially this close to the Noble's estates, but you should put out the candles for the night and hide the fire if she stays here."

Fenris bent his head toward the Guard-Captain, acknowledging her advice before she left. He took the book and the mage and dragged her back into the room they had been sorting the books in.

* * *

The month that followed was strange. Bethany was sorting the papers. It was a long process because she had to read them all before being sure it was dangerous or useless. Unless, as before with the books, they emitted a particular energy. She'd have Fenris toss them into the fire. They spent two days this way. When night fell, Aveline came in her civilian clothes. The second night, she brought Leandra Hawke with her.

"They're still standing guard in front of your Uncle's house." Aveline said. "They've doubled the patrols."

Leandra was embracing her daughter. Fenris was startled to see her at last.

He had heard Marian comment about how she wasn't strong as she used to be and Bethany saying she had never been the same since her husband died. Leandra Hawke was simply skin on bones that moved very slowly as if her brittle body, thin like a reed, could break at the smallest breeze. Her long grey hair was beautiful, though and her piercing grey eyes, the same as her eldest, were full of gratitude when she raised her gaze toward Fenris'.

"Thank you, elf, for keeping my daughter safe." she said. "I'm not sure what would have happened to me if they had took her."

Fenris did know, however. She was at the end of her life, clinging to what remained of her Dominater in her children, feeding off their life force as she could without even knowing it. She was a ghost. In Tevinter, he'd seen such creatures. Ghouls that only had their Dominater's name on their lips as they died of hunger. Sometimes, the Servux even died before its Dominater from their ability to feed on them without having to use a knife. The very first form of Blood Magic. He wanted to spit on the two women. He refrained to do so and the acid came burning at his throat again. They had leftover wine from their lunch, he brought the bottle to his lips and drank while Bethany fed her mother her magic without knowing she was doing it. He chuckled. She could smell dark magic from ten feet and couldn't recognize the way she was feeding a dying bond? She was so naive and untaught. He didn't regret giving her the book. If it held answers, she might get wiser.

Aveline stopped the reunion too early for Bethany's tastes. Fenris could tell from her sigh when the door closed behind the old woman and the warrior. Bethany returned to her reading of the thrice damned book. She'd been reading it for two full nights now. He knew she was not getting much sleep because she looked tired, giving her an even gloomier look about her. Seeing her mother helped a bit, gave her cheeks colour, but she looked even sicker than she used to whenever she was caught thinking alone.

During the day, she would say something about her reading. About how some tribe from her country had the Bonded married and rule on their peers because they had been granted a gift from their gods. There was even in the endnotes some text gathered from one of the first Dalish Keepers about how the Bond was to them the manifestation of eternal love.

"Does the book tell of the Qunari customs, or is it too early?" Fenris asked.

Bethany seemed startled. They didn't exchange much words, of course she was surprised, Fenris thought, annoyed.

"Well… The book was written around the time of Andraste's birth." she said. "That means that it predates the Qunari invasions… Seven and half centuries, maybe… And obviously… No one had met any Qunari before that. Or they probably weren't called Qunari like the old Kossith settlement in the Wilds south of Ferelden. They disappeared long before the time of the Prophetess, though, around the First Blight. Or so my father taught us." she added.

She seemed content to have finished with the papers because it meant she would sleep during the night and read Of Dominater and Bonding during the day. Leandra visited again three times and it sickened Fenris to feel the energy flow between them. He usually left the room at these times. Bethany usually thanked him a lot when he came back.

Fenris sometimes left the run down estate to run errands, buy or steal food even when Aveline was not resupplying them.

That's how he saw Marian, Isabela, Varric and Anders finally coming back with new riches. They were dirty and looked famished, but all of them had a huge grins on their faces. Behind Isabela, Anders looked even more gaunt and haunted, but seemed to appreciate the open air so much he seemed to be drunk on it. Varric and Isabela were exchanging jokes.

"Fenris!" Marian yelled. "Ha!"

She took him by his shoulders. It seemed that she was not so foolish as to make him twirl in the air like a young bride. She soon got back to business and Fenris could not be happier for it. As she was about to get to Lowtown, he tugged her sleeve and led her toward the Chantry instead. When the two sisters met, Marian asked for explanations of course and she was just as decided as when she first asked Fenris to protect her sister.

"Until I buy the mansion back, you're staying there." Marian told her.

Something on the elder Hawke's face told Fenris that something was amiss. Did she expect Bethany to contest the decision? He looked at her more attentively. The smile she gave her sister, it was not the smile that made Varric call her Sunshine.


	7. Chapter 7

Bethany finally decided herself and entered her mother's room. Leandra was in one of her good days, today. She looked a bit refreshed and energetic. Bethany had brought her lunch. An excuse not to touch her. The book said it was worse if there was any physical contact between the two subjects. The whole thing felt so unbearable. She started to feel it now. The way Leandra unconsciously tugged at her heart to feed on it. She wondered again if she was not better off in the Circle. Then if she was so ungrateful to her mother that she'd let her die just to be rid of her?

Bethany was not sure she should stay near her family. Of Dominater and Bonding had been an eye opening read and it scared her. It scared her how far it went in the merging of two lives. It scared her to realise that Mum had stayed alive so long only because she had children to feed and her need to stay close to her dead husband through them. It was also scary to read about how the Tevinter used to deal with the Bond, the difference in terminology for the Adittus, becoming a Servux, a slave instead of a chosen one. It made her sick, it made her happy Leto had died and she was raised by the rightful Divine in Her cathedral in Val Royeaux. When she read about marvelous Bonding ceremonies and heroes lending strength to each other, she wasn't surprised a society reveling in its elite would ban such a book.

She sighed quietly, earning a glance from her mother. Bethany had before been curious to see how she could fit in the nobles world, even excited at a prospect that was the stuff of her childhood dreams, but now she didn't care. She wanted to go away from Marian, forever asking her if she was alright. She wanted to let Mum die instead of sustaining a husk that was losing more and more of her wits and abilities.

At least, Leandra Amell got to see her childhood home back. Once the renovation works were over, she tried to get back to what she would have done had she not eloped with an apostate. It lasted a week, but the amount of exercise she did started to take such a toll on the whole Hawke family, that Bethany completely shut down her magic to her with great difficulty. Leandra was now a tired thing on a bed that was mostly sleeping while Marian renewed the social connections for her and Bethany the magical ones, albeit temporarily. Bodhan took care of the household in every other way.

The young woman didn't know what to do or what to say to her Mother, she just tried to smile and not to look so gloomy anymore. Now Varric called her Crocodile. Fenris had complained, saying it didn't suit her.

"She has the teeth, but not the hide." he added in his gruff brooding voice.

Bethany had sighed but didn't comment. At least, he wasn't calling her names like he did with Anders and Merrill.

Anders and Merrill… Well, those two started to freak her out properly now since the Alrik business and the Arulin'Holm disaster Marian had told her about (plus: blood magic and spirits are creepy). She'd be glad whenever Marian asked her to tag along for a job because it meant that not a lot of healing were needed. Marian and Isabela being attached at the hip since the Deep Roads, there simply wasn't much room for more than one mage at a time lest they attracted even more templar attention. Usually, Fenris would be there.

She didn't know what to think of Fenris. She was thinking about him so much, she wondered if she fancied him. That would explain why her heart got all fluttery all the time. There was a heavy metal door between him and her still, despite the time she spent at the run down mansion.

She had started to go back to said mansion once she had been free of all the nobility's shenanigans and other shindigs. She asked if he wanted to learn how to read properly. He accepted. They had a lesson per week. He would come to the estate and Bethany would read with him. It was quite easy since he knew most of the letters already, he just needed practice and a tutor.

His company was somewhat keeping her sane. She liked his silence. She liked that he tried to be less judgemental towards her and... Well, she liked the way he was somewhat friendly... As friendly as he ever was to be with someone like her. She liked to think that he trusted her enough to break bread with her and let himself be taught a useful skill.

She also liked his eyes, but she tried not to think about it. The closer they were, the more her magic started to boil in her, wanting to get out. She tried to control her emotions. Emotions and magic don't mix really well, unless there's a Bond involved or so the book and Dad said.

One day, after he finished a book of tales for children on his own without help, Fenris thanked her. She suddenly realised that she also really liked his voice.

"Well,..." Bethany said. "Maybe if you want to practice more you can come at the usual time and read something from the library... Unless you don't... Errr..."

"I want to practice more." He simply interrupted her.

His green eyes were shining with some strange light that made her magic feel like it was restrained. She breathed in hard and told him to come at the usual time.

He'd come and read out loud a book he'd chose on the shelves. Beth had Marian and Bodhan keeping it well stocked. Any magical tomes were always given to Merrill or Anders. The Amell couldn't be afford new accusations about magical activities. Any tome except Of Dominater and Bonding that was carefully concealed in a wine barrel between two runes Bethany had ordered from Sandal.

Bethany sighed again and thought that Mum really looked well today. It brought a smile to her lips as they talked. Then Marian came, requesting she put on her dancing shoes. Bethany took leave and went to change into her armour and comfortable boots.

Fenris was waiting outside the estate. He too looked well. There was almost a smile up his usually pursed lips. Bethany smiled back and she was startled when she heard a voice say :

"Watch how the sun rises!"

"Shut up Varric!" Bethany spat. The shock took a bit of time to wear off. She hadn't seen Varric nor Isabela, focused as she was on the elf.

They left the City for some business on the Coast, laughing (or in Bethany's case, sulking). Fenris even cracked a joke.

Until the ambush. Fenris tensed and the playful banter stopped.

They had caught up with him… Bethany thought, horrified.


	8. Chapter 8

"Fenris is not a slave." Marian shouted.

When the battle started, Bethany was startled by its ferocity. By Fenris' ferocity. The way he pounced on his enemies and tore them apart with his powers. The way he tortured the mage to get the information he wanted.

Bethany watched, sending healing and protection spells, shocked to be reminded that Fenris, the one that diligently listened to her reading lessons, the one that greeted her as an equal whose strengths he respected, was a ruthless killer filled with hatred.

Marian and him argued a lot when they followed the trail of Hadriana, an agent of Danarius, Fenris assured them. The contract they left the city for was probably going to be filled another day because the caves where the witch had holed up herself in were filled with demons, shades and corpses bled dry. Bethany actually vomited the contents of her stomach when they found an altar covered with exsanguinated bodies. Elven bodies. Other better fed bodies wearing armours that were painted with a too familiar shade of crimson.

Bethany was about to meet a mage that was born and bred in Tevinter and she knew that she wasn't going to like her. She knew that if by some miracle, Fenris didn't kill her or granted her a quick death, she'd suffer. She didn't know how or why. She just knew that from watching Fenris walk from afar.

Hadriana proved to be the bitch Bethany imagined. When they finally found her in a room full of dead bodies, her arms still covered in the blood of the innocent she slaughtered for this ill gained power, she attacked. She might have looked pretty once, the simpering sycophant had pretty hair and richly embroidered robes now ruined by the blood and her face was heavily painted, probably by one of the slaves she killed.

She spat red blood when Fenris skewered her onto his arm. Then, she started to talk and her voice was an unbearable high pitched tweeting :

"I can repair your bond..." she squeaked hurriedly, her voice unsure if she was plucking at the right strings in her desperation. "I can bring your sister and you soul mate back. I can bring back your name, your identity…"

Or was it the pain? It must be painful to have an arm shoved into your thorax, Bethany thought suddenly, now insensible to the violence. This woman deserved it so much.

"What did you do to me?" he hissed.

"Nothing! The Bond… It was dead after the ritual, you were about to waste away, I gained full apprenticeship status by finding a spell to bind myself to you, to serve as you Dominater of substitution. I used theLlyrium and the Bond, I attached them to my magic... " the witch blurted out, happy to answer his questions, thinking like the fool she was that he was going to spare her life for this.

"You augmented your powers in more ways than one and even pissed your Master off by tying yourself to me, tricking him into accepting you…" Fenris answered, contempt dripping from his tongue, thick like poisoned honey.

"Don't kill me…" Hadriana shrieked. "You'll waste away again…"

"I don't care, I'll die happy to have ended your pathetic excuse of a life, you power hungry bitch." Fenris groaned.

His arm tore into the bitch's chest, twisting and turning, making Hadriana's cries sing in some strangely beautiful chaotic rythm before he got the heart out of it in a shower of blood, clutching at a still beating organ that expelled jets of red liquid onto Fenris's face and armour. Behind, his companions were staring at him as if he had turned into an abomination.

Bethany suddenly remembered that breathing was kind of important and swallowed a gulp of air with great difficulty before approaching the beast in front of her. A beast that used to be her friend… A beast she desperately wanted to help.

"Fenris." She whispered.

The elf looked tired, deranged and worryingly pale. He turned his gaze towards Beth. She took another step towards him and her finger grazed at his arm in the process. She couldn't hold it back anymore. She let it go and a stream of healing magic went through them both. For probably the thousandth time of the day, Bethany forgot to breathe and her eyes opened into his. Green and gold bore into each other for a while until she could finally speak.

"Are you fine?" she asked, still out of breath.

He nodded the affirmative... And then his head shook from head to right in a big panicked no. Bethany took a step back, startled and regretted it instantly because the magic… The magic was gone!

"I need some air." He said, as breathless as Bethany was, before running away.

Bethany couldn't let him go, she had to follow!

"Wait !" Marian yelled as Bethany ran after him.

But the escaped slave was too and the others caught up with the youngest Hawke and they arrived at the city together, bloodied and one man lesser.

"Dibs on the bathtub." Marian said, once at the Amell estate, trying to banish the sinister events that had just occurred. Bethany couldn't even offer her Crocodile smile, though.

All she could think about was Fenris and the book. Fenris and the Bond. Fenris and Hadriana being artificially bonded and saving his life. She thought about the four letters on her breath and wondered for a second if Fenris was indeed Leto.

Thankfully, her uncle making a fuss in the hall, providing a much needed distraction and Bodhan ever so polite tried to calm him down.

"Messere Hawke." Bodhan said. "Your uncle doesn't want to accept that your Lady Mother felt well enough to run an errand today. Oh, that's a great deal of blood. Sandal, please, run a bath for the ladies!"

"This is ridiculous!" Gamlen yelled. "Your mother never runs errands on her own anymore! And every Torndas afternoon I take her to visit the Lowtown market." he added more calmly after his oldest nephew glared at him. "I'm merely curious to see where she went and worried that she went alone with her... Well, her condition and all that!"

Bethany and Marian exchanged a glance. This was indeed a concern.

"She went with her suitor to that exact place, she told me." Bodahn said. "A charming fellow." he added. "He came a few times to keep her company while the sisters were away and I know from Lady Amell herself that they exchanged many letters. He even gave her flowers. I placed them in a vase of them myself, here they are."

Bethany saw the white lilies and immediately thought that this man was thoughtful and a gentleman.

"They're Mum's favourite." she said with a thin smile.

Then she was startled by the way Marian squealed as if she was being strangled.

"White lilies?"

Gamlen's face turned white and Bethany suddenly listened to her sister, solemn like a grave.

"A few years ago we lost all trace of a serial killer who murdered a Circle mage and a noble in Hightown. Je courted the victims, gave them white lilies and we only found a severed hand at what was supposed to be his hiding place."

"I don't think I was there for that." Bethany said, suddenly worried.

It seemed like after a very long day, they were going to spend a very long night. Marian tasked her sister to gather their allies that were probably in Hightown, adding "have Aveline retrieve the Priest." something Beth didn't really understand at the moment.

And then they were out, running like madwomen. Bethany started with the barracks where Aveline was filling some papers. Both went to the Chantry where they retrieved the strangest brother of the Faith Bethany ever saw. He was very tall and wore a white armour. He also owned a longbow that was made in a rich kind of wood. Even Bethany knew this was no mere hunting bow. When they exited the House of the Maker, Bethany hesitated. Fenris said he needed air but… She couldn't…

"I'll try to get Fenris. Go ahead. " she told her fellows.

The Priest and the Guard-Captain saluted her and they separated.

Bethany breathed in hard before opening the door. The tiny call escaping her mouth was a whisper, but it echoed in the house as if she had yelled from the top of the Frostback Mountains.

She carefully went up the stairs. They creaked horribly as the tension within the mage rose. She was scared for him. She feared he had done something horrible to himself. She was scared that he had fled, threatened with discovery from his former master now that he killed his star student. She was scared he fled her as she was replacing Hadriana's role in his life. Not that she thought she was, no. No, no, no, no, no. She was not even remotely similar to that evil bint. She would never abuse of her power. And then, there was this spell she mentioned, Bethany was absolutely sure that a healing spell was way different than what the witch had done.

Or was it?

She was at the top of the stairs now and she felt like she was about to burst into flames. The house seemed awfully empty and yet a presence was worming itself into her. Someone attacked her. It was him, she knew it, even without lighting, she knew his face, she knew his smell and she knew it was him somehow. His face was close to hers, it was pale and wet with sweat, his eyes wildly darting around him, his hands pinning her arms to the wall.

She decided that talking was not her best option. The last mage that tried to sweet talk him ended up badly and she had completely deserved it, so she stayed silent and waited.

She felt a tugging in her chest, in her heart. A passage from the book came to her mind. She realised that he was feeding off her like her mother did, but it didn't feel the same. It felt… It felt good. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. She wanted to give it to him. Her magic belonged to him. She abandoned herself to the feeling, closing her eyes and leaning into his embrace.

For the first time since she was thirteen, Bethany Hawke felt like she belonged somewhere.


	9. Chapter 9

For the first time in his life, Fenris felt like he belonged somewhere. He couldn't control himself that night, had no idea of what was happening when he swept Bethany Hawke off her feet and carried her to the bed. Then he lied next to her, content to finally feel right, next to the woman. He felt right. His lyrium brands didn't itch anymore, his heart didn't feel like it was going to get out of his body by his throat. Her semi closed eyes were looking at him with no malice. There was a tenderness in those gold irises, an innocence he was loath to taint. He held her hands and kissed her brow on an impulse.

They had been close like that plenty of times during their reading lessons, but it had never felt like that. In fact, it had hurt. Fenris knew that Hadriana was near, he knew it in the way his blood was boiling, his lyrium was itching, in the way the twisted screen that was her Maker forsaken Blood Magic was forbidding any kind of connection with her. Because it was her and Hadriana was in the way. The Hawke girls (or was it ladies, now?) had helped with the seething anger, gave them patience. That helped with the waiting, made it bearable. Until the confrontation. Then, he did not care anymore. He just wanted her dead, he just wanted her foreign and evil presence out of his body, out of his mind. He needed a bath to remove the filth. However, when he first jumped into the seawater after outrunning the other mage that sought power over him, he could not shake off the feeling that he was tainted by magic, that women and men were just twisted deceivers that would always torment him. Then, he limped into an empty cave and fell asleep for a few minutes, exhaustion finally taking him down. When he woke up, his head was still fuzzy, but at least he could walk back to Kirkwall.

When Fenris had first awoken with no memories of his past, his limbs aching and his heart feeling like it had been removed from his chest and then replaced upside down, Hadriana had been there. She had been there and she had treated her like her Servux. For a while he had believed her. Until she traced the faded letters on his chest several times. She usually snorted.

"Bethany Hawke. Sounds Fereldan. This peasant girl is probably locked up in one of their prisons for being born with the gift of magic… While I'm here… A powerful mage, backed up by a powerful Magister and your one and only Dominater..."

One night, she dared coming to their masters' room where they both slept. She had traced the letters with her hand again and looked at him with a knowing look and a smirk. When she was discovered, Danarius started to play the game too in his way. He insisted that he served Hadriana in every regard and she took full advantage of it once she realised that she had the full permission of her master to use her powers as a Dominater.

Fenris sighed. He remembered clearly all the abuse, all the silent enduring. All the blood when Danarius used one of the shrivelled things Hadriana had housed in her womb to fuel a renewal of the Bonding. It was unthinkable that Danarius would have let Hadriana use his property as her own… But then, he enjoyed toying with all his property. Hadriana had been one of his slaves too once. Maybe he was leading her on. Maybe he was not.

The elf and the mage slept in the run down mansion. He didn't remember a time when he had slept this well since Seheron. The Fog Warriors. He dreamt of it, but the ache he felt whenever he thought about it was gone. A bird with golden feathers flew above it and dulled the stabbing of the culpability into a sad song that brought sadness but no more pain or guilt.

When they awoke to a sudden downpour from the hole in the ceiling, Bethany looked rested, but anxious all the same. Something was amiss, he realised. The young woman inspected her blood soaked and wet self with disbelief before retrieving her staff and turning on her heels to face him once more. Fenris read the silent question.

"Nothing happened." he said simply. "Not of that nature."

Relief crossed her features, but she was still nervous.

"My Mum disappeared yesterday night." she said. "I was coming to take you in case we needed another sword."

Her blood drenched leather armour looked as if she was just out of the battle, wet as it was from the rain. He really should move the bed elsewhere. He averted his gaze from her clinging clothes.

"Go." he whispered.

Bethany hesitated and finally left. Fenris moved the bed further along the wall and sat on it. He wanted to go after her. After a few minutes of waiting, uneasy, he strapped his sword on his back and left the mansion and under the rain. He walked throughout Hightown toward the Chantry and then the Amell Estate. The door was still open and he understood why when he entered. Marian was lying on the floor along with a body wrapped in linen. Sebastian, the Chantry priest that was also a prince and an archer was commending her soul to the Maker. Bethany was holding Marian's head on her knees.

"She's been crying all night." Merrill supplied, sounding genuinely sorry. "She's pretty exhausted now that she shouted on Bethany."

She then explained how Leandra died. The woman had been courted by a mage named Quentin. He lost his wife several years ago and tried to recreate her. He simply needed a face. He even twisted their broken bonds to tie them together. Fenris shivered and banished any thoughts of Hadriana. He wasn't sure if the thoughts about Bethany that replaced them bothered him yet...

Fenris assisted Sebastian and Anders with the moving of the corpse toward the Chantry to be burnt. Bethany was still holding Marian that seemed to have shrunk. She usually stood almost as tall as Aveline and Sebastian, but right now, it seemed like Bethany was the tallest sister. Fenris wanted to smile but refrained himself from doing so. He had already told a joke about how her unruly mop of black curls was the only way she managed to be as tall as he.

But that was before. Before he killed Hadriana in cold blood. Before she missed her mother's last moments. A lot of nobles came at the funeral. Marian and Bethany were given empty words from some, false words from others, sincere words from people who knew Leandra Amell when she was a child.

The body was burnt, the ashes were bottled into an urn. Marian took them home and Bethany sat on a pew. Fenris could see that she was praying. No, not see. Feel. He felt the devotion, the utter certitude that there was a Maker out there that had his back turned on the living but who made it up by watching over the dead. The elf sighed. It echoed within the nef. Bethany saw him and he felt again how her heart skipped a beat. The suspicions he had before that she was indeed the Bethany Hawke he was bonded to in his other life were confirmed. When he sat next to her, he had no doubt anymore. It was her and he was back.

They stayed there. He knew she needed silence and yet craved a company the Maker denied. It's only when her tears dried that he took her hand softly in his.


	10. Chapter 10

His skin was rough, but his lips were soft. She couldn't stop running her hands in his white hair while he lavished her breasts with his mouth, sucking at her tits with a hunger he had always contained, probably because he didn't really know what to do of them.

If there really was a "them" before. Fenris started to "court" her somehow after Mum's death. At least, that's what Bodahn and Marian called it. Varric and Merrill said he looked like a puppy in love, Isabela taunted them with stories of her elven lovers (that were suspiciously all hung like Qunaris… Not that Bethany could ever compare!). And Anders had argued with her about it. Told her he was a feral beast that needed to be tamed and put down. The dark circles and the blue glow around his eyes made Bethany wary of heeding any of his advice, though.

He'd come, they'd read, both seated in the same sofa and talk. At first, it was mostly of the Bond, of how Hadriana and Danarius severed it and reattached it to themselves. From the reading of Of Dominater and Bonding, they knew now that after Leandra and Hadriana died, both had attached themselves to each other. She suspected strongly thanks to their newly formed empathic bond that Fenris was withholding something. Until now. He was withholding his need to taste her and make love to her.

The Qunari situation had finally exploded. The Viscount was dead, Marian was probably dying from the Arishok's blade. Thankfully, Anders, as besotted as he was with the elder Hawke, hadn't hesitated to heal her the very moment the Arishok fell to the floor and stopped twitching. She was still in a critical state, Anders said. Bethany had been waiting at the door, crying a river of tears, afraid she'd be left alone when Fenris came and brought her to her own room. In his embrace, she couldn't resist, she had to think of something, so she got lost again in the bond. It felt so good to bathe in his light. Sooner than they realised, they were both naked on the bed, hungry for each other, one of his hands between her thighs, rubbing her and another cupping her behind.

They caressed, explored, emboldened by the emergency to feel alive when someone was dying in the room just next to them. Someone that should never ever die, if Bethany had her say. She couldn't say or do anything, however, so she chose to feel alive.

She stifled a shriek when he finally took her, breaking her hymen. She could not contain the others when he started moving. It hurt for almost a whole minute during which Fenris struggled to slow down his movements into her virgin body. Once she accommodated to him (or anyone she thought with a little hysterical laugh), she started to feel the pleasure at last. Fenris held her close as he kissed her, ravished her. Bethany was suddenly feeling so hot she couldn't bear being crushed beneath him anymore. He knew instantly of course as he held himself above her, still moving inside her, making her shout again, each move so foreign and delightful. She really understood Isabela better now.

Orgasm didn't take her by surprise like in her naughty books, though. She felt it build inside of her, reach her belly and her nipples. She felt it build inside of Fenris too. A need for it to get into her, to merge into her, the tightening of his balls as he knew that something was going to get out of him into her anyway. His very essence perhaps. His heart.

Bethany almost blacked out from the strength of their common release.

Fenris actually di. Exhaustion took over his body as he fell next to her, shaking and sweaty. He managed to bring her closer to him before sleep claimed him. Beth cursed his luck. Even after such an experience, one she had thought about for the several month they'd been "together" (if there was even a "together") he managed to fall asleep... Her hair was sticking to her eyes, so she contorted her arm out of Fenris' embrace to remove the bangs and sweep them aside. The fire was still roaring in the hearth, softly lulling her to sleep. Her half closed eyes roamed on his body, savouring its nakedness. Her eyes were naturally drawn to his left side where nasty scars were half covered in lyrium vines.

Her dreams were unexpectedly haunted. She felt their presence, the demons. She spent her whole night listening to them plead their cases, propose cajoling if not ridiculous deals. She knew all of them to be false. She also had everything she desired for, she trusted Anders to heal Marian, despite the worry.

She also knew the reason why they came. She was getting stronger. Especially now that she was Bonded to Fenris.

When she woke up, Fenris was dressed and sitting in front of the fireplace. Bethany felt a bit cold and also his anger and his despair. He looked at her with a strange look on his face, his green eyes wat as if he was about to cry and left. When Anders softly knocked on the door, she mechanically allowed him to enter, not caring if he saw her naked sprawled on her bed and crying herself.

The older mage deposited a tray covered with Orana's delicious cooking and sat next to her. Bethany's tears doubled.

"Your sister is well." Anders told her. "You can visit her now. Unless, you don't wish to talk." he added.

"I'm such a fool..." Bethany croaked. "It felt so good and… And I think... We were meant to be..."

"I…" Anders stopped. He must have realised that what he was about to say was extremely tactless, Bethany thought ironically. She was not in the mood for I told you so's.

"There is no such thing as meant to be." he finally said. "Especially in cases such as yours. You're everything he despises, you have two broken bonds..."

Bethany suddenly laughed.

"It hasn't even occurred to you that I might be crying because I was right?" she spat at him. "That I might be crying because we both suffered so much, especially him, that I lament on the Maker's twisted sense of humour? You self righteous..."

She couldn't say the word. Her head fell back on her pillow. The man who saved her sister and was offering advice, yet from a clouded point of view, was not a prick.

She suddenly covered herself with her blanket. She didn't care about anything Anders might say. An elf had her name on his chest. As long as he was alive, everything was going to be alright... After all, Leto couldn't get any more dead.


	11. Chapter 11

Fenris was angry at himself. He didn't really know what he expected. What he didn't expect was the red haired little girl.

She had green eyes.

He shivered. He felt disgusted with himself. He should have never left her side.

She called him Leto.

The letters were etched on Bethany's breast, the scars faded and burning his eyes while he pleasured her. Leto.

The bench he used to sit on with her when they sorted books and papers years ago was thrown across the room to break upon collision with the wall. He still felt the softness of her skin beneath his fingertips, his cock throbbed at the memory of her moaning his name, begging him to continue even if it was hurting.

Hadriana had been a virgin too.

The table joined the remains of the bench.

Something was wetting Fenris' cheek. He removed the offending tear, but it was followed by another as other memories came polluting his mind.

Cinnamon cookies. Red haired girl. The sting of the bond. The blonde elfwoman impaled on a polearm.The burning agony of white hot lyrium being poured into open wounds carved into strange patterns. A woman with mouse brown hair and blue eyes muttering incantations. Another sting on his breast.

The sand of the arena was so hot it burnt Leto's feet. His skin was already blistering under the unyielding Minrathous sun...

Fenris was choking under the weight of two lives being returned to him. An avalanche of memories were playing before his eyes and letting another take its place before he could process them or even guess what they were about. All he knew was that it stopped suddenly and all he could remember was the red haired little girl eating cookies, laughing, being chased by...By him?Or by him?

Fenris cursed himself. Again. He was on a quest to reconquer his life, to be his own man. Was he about to back away now?

He couldn't. This mage girl, now a wonderful woman, had wormed herself in a place that was not exactly that of Hadriana, nor that of Danarius (nor that of that red headed girl with green eyes filled with worry in the plebeian pit)...

Fenris realised that he didn't have any more furniture to toss around. He kicked the cracked wooden board that used to be a table.

He felt helpless, invaded by this Leto that was so different from him. The itch of his lyrium burnt skin made him want to rip it from his bones and burn it like a flea ridden shirt.

The elf sat on the floor. The bed was broken in half and would require either repairs or the removal of the wooden parts to sleep on the age old feather mattress. It always amused him to sleep in a featherbed. The most comfortable bedding he ever had before Kirkwall was the carpet in Danarius' chambers in his Minrathous estate.

He remembered falling asleep between Bethany's breasts. The anger now subsided, there was only confusion and regret left. The day passed by, the sun appearing and disappearing on the floor through the ceiling's hole. Night came and went and sleep eluded him. He heard Marian Hawke enter the house. He hid. He had no need for any talks regarding the youngest Hawke's virtue, nor was he in the mood to kill any Tal-Vashoth stragglers or looters she might have been tasked to dispatch with her axe. He spent two days pondering on his… Whatever that was he did to attract Bethany Hawke's attention (Varric called it courting...) and the consequences in his confused heart and even more fucked up brain.

He didn't find a clean answer, nor in his, nor in the jumbled mish mash of memories from Leto. In his heart, though… His heart wanted a lot of things. His heart wanted to run to Bethany Hawke, to beg for her forgiveness and forget everything that is or was Leto. The other wanted to storm Tevinter to look for his sister.

He quickly found a compromise as he went to the Hanged Man. Varric must have paper, quills and ink.


	12. Chapter 12

Marian Hawke was furious to see Fenris at the Hanged Man this night. How dare he? How… Argh, she couldn't even begin to describe how mad she was at the elf. The man had disappeared for a week. She had thought him gone. She had thought him a bastard cocksucker for sleeping with her sister. And now he strolled right into their cardgame, probably having forgotten it was Wednesday, as if nothing had happened. As if Bethany had not lost her virginity the very night her older sister died.

If Fenris hadn't left, maybe Marian would have been happy for them. If Bethany hadn't insisted that everything was fine with a sad face, explaining in details how it was normal for the former slave to be at odds with a romantic relationship or how they had bonded or were bonded (frankly, Hawke didn't understand anything to her babble!) she'd had even been indifferent.

So this night, at the Hanged Man, a tall brown haired woman with blue eyes took her axe and threw it on a white haired elf who caught it by the handle, unharmed. The elf sighed after he eyed the group, seemingly looking for someone in their merry band of misfits. Marian didn't really want to decide if she was furious or happy he came to see her sister.

"Hello." Fenris said to the card playing group.

Nods followed. Sebastian also voiced the greeting.

"Where is Isabela?" he then asked after his gaze lingered on every crook and cranny in the bar.

"Where is Isabela?" Marian repeated.

Fenris seemed to realise that his question was odd because he suddenly turned to Varric.

"Do you have any spare writing supplies?"

"Sure. Planning to write to Gloomy?" he said.

"My correspondence is none of your concern, dwarf." Fenris answered, as a golden coin landed in the betting pool. "Your next bet is on me. I'll retrieve what I need from your room."

He then gave Marian her axe back and turned towards the stairs. Marian followed.

"Fenris." she started as they were out of earshot. "Where have you been?"

Fenris sighed.

"Here and there." he then answered cryptically.

"You've been missed. Especially since Isabela left after the Qunari fiasco."

Marian tried to keep her voice neutral. She missed Isabela. That was partly the reason for her really foul mood this week. That and being impaled on a sword, almost dying and then discovering that while she laid in what ought to have been her death bed, her sister had been fucked by someone who didn't seem to deserve such an honour.

Fenris seemed to sigh a lot today. This was very out of character.

"I had… A crisis of faith." he said. "I… I'll write to Bethany to apologize."

"You're going to do it tomorrow at the estate and on your knees, if you're a man." Marian retorted in a threatening hiss. "Nobody uses my sister like a worker from the Rose."

"I can assure you that this was not my intention, Hawke." Fenris firmly assured her.

She heard a certain grain in his voice. She recognized it. I was the same she heard whenever she spoke for a while after Mum's death.

It was like a cold shower. Marian retreated back to the main room where Varric had probably already watched all her cards, judging by Sebastian's colouring and Anders' giggles. Merrill probably didn't even see it by the way she fixed her own cards, as if wondering what they actually did in the game.

Without sitting down, Marian folded, revealing her poor hand to the world, and left the tavern. This situation was starting to really piss her off.


	13. Chapter 13

Bethany felt lonely. She couldn't confide in Marian anymore, her older sister was too angry to be of any help. She knew what Anders thought (pretty much the same as the woman he was in love with and even more) and how he would not change his mind about it. Varric joked. Sebastian blushed. Intimacy before marriage is a sin, Bethany. Isabela could have helped, but she fled after having returned the Tome of Koslun. Merrill just insisted that everything was going to be alright. Beth allowed herself a grin. She imagined how the pirate would have interrogated her about the elf and his bedchamber performance or asked if his tattoos went all the way down with Merrill blushing and laughing.

Life had become a constant state of waiting again. While she thought it great when her Bondmark first appeared when she was eight, she was now loathing this constant incertitude fifteen years later. She was waiting for him to realise that they were made for each other since the beginning, that she was not a Magister, willing to take his life force and make it hers. Well… She wanted him to be hers, but she wanted him to want it too. So she spent three months. Waiting. For him.

She spent a lot of this time in the Chantry, especially when Sebastian was there. She had learned that Fenris often spoke with him and Marian also trusted the Prince turned Brother of the Faith. She sat on a pew, just like the day Mum died and she prayed. She prayed the Maker that Fenris will understand she wished no harm to him. That she'd gladly drag Hadriana back from the Void for him to kill her again. That she'd always be by his side, especially when the time came to finally rip a Magister's heart out of his chest.

Bethany sighed. The Chantry had always been a fearful experience as a child. When Marian bought the Estate back, Leandra had wanted to visit the House of the Maker again and Bethany was the only one who could carry her to the steps, Bodahn being too short to support her properly and Leandra didn't even have enough force to use a cane. Bethany enjoyed prayer, but far from Chantries. This one, though, was so big that she didn't feel like she was about to be discovered and brought to the Circle to be made Tranquil.

She enjoyed the peace, the smell of incense and she prayed in Kirkwall's Chantry. She even came for some of Sebastian's sermons.

She wished Fenris would come, sit next to her and take her hand. This wait was killing her, she suddenly though as she sat up and made her way toward the exit.

And there he was. A sister was looking at him cross as he fidgeted. Bethany contained an unlady-like snort. When he looked at her, she wanted to giggle. Andraste was merciful and helped her contain this one too, though.

He seemed hesitant, but he kept walking towards her, slowly, looking uneasy. Beth didn't move. Actually, she had to take a deep breath when he finally sat on the pew she had just left. She had just forgotten to breathe. Bethany sat down next to him. The heat his body radiated reminded her of that night three years ago. She shivered. She wondered if Isabela had already done the deed in a Chantry. She was going to ask her, because the firm devotion Leandra had passed onto her children forbade her to do so herself. At least, Dad's wicked sense of humour helped her contain her blushing at such blasphemous thoughts.

Fenris didn't take her hand, but he whispered:

"Your sister requires that I apologize for my behaviour." he said.

Beth tensed. Was he not there of his own accord? After she left him three months to make up his mind? She felt it, the same emotions she had were swarming in him too. There was longing and need.

"I required her help." Fenris supplied as an explanation. "I did plan to say something to you… I was simply a fool."

"Fenris, I know all of it must be foreign, but it is to me too…" Bethany started.

"You don't understand." Fenris groaned. He stopped, searching for words to hide the truth of their bon. "I… I started to remember. Everything. And then it was gone. It is both frustrating and infuriating. Now it is haunting me still." he finally explained."One of those memories always lingers. It made me look for the sister Hadriana mentioned. She exists."

Bethany felt the feelings, contradictory and then, hidden even from her, the alarm.

"You… You didn't contact her!?" she whispered in disbelief.

Fenris' silence was deafening in the middle of the mostly empty Chantry.

"What if it's a trap?"

"That is why I asked for your sister's help. Why I'm asking for yours."

Bethany breathed in relief. She wanted to kiss this man. It took three months, but finally he was there. He was returning to her, albeit not completely. She simply had to help him to take control of his past at last, something she was very willing to do, something she needed to do. She wanted to help him so much. Oh, the joy to see him return to her… She could have cried, but they were interrupted by a low pitched voice that belonged to an older woman.

"Lady Bethany Amell. Sister of the Champion." a voice greeted.

Bethany's heart suddenly clenched as fear overtook her. She heard this voice once. This woman had made Marian Hawke the Champion of Kirkwall. Beth took a deep breath and turned around to greet Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard, the commander of all the templars of the Free Marches, considering the status of Starkhaven's Order and its Circle of Magi.

"Greetings to you, Knight Commander Meredith." Bethany said.

"I trust your sister is taking her duty to the city seriously." Ser Stannard said, not sounding even remotely friendly.

"My sister is proud to offer her axe to protect the weak." Bethany answered. "I prefer prayer."

The woman, blonde haired and blue eyed was impressive, Bethany thought. What she lacked in height, she made in bulk, looking like a barrel of metal. A barrel made of metal and full to the brim with a highly volatile substance in more ways than one. Her stern eyes then fell on Fenris.

"Why in the name of the name of the Maker are you bringing a weapon into the House of the Maker, elf?" she asked, with a nonchalance that felt more like a threat.

"I'm charged with Lady Amell's protection." Fenris retorted, raising his head high. He was almost the same height as the templar.

"Oh, and pray tell, what does she need protection for in the middle of the Chantry when one of the Maker's soldiers is within?" Ser Meredith sneered.

"The Champion of Kirkwall has as much enemies as she has friends. As My Lady said earlier, while the eldest favours the axe, the youngest's weapons are less sharp in nature." the elf retorted.

"Did the Champion buy you services?" the templar asked, raising an eyebrow.

"She didn't need to." Fenris assured her.

A staring contest ensued. Finally, Meredith coldly bade them a good day and travelled along the nave toward the Grand Cleric's office. Beth and Fenris walked along the nave in the other direction, that of the giant gilded double doors that led to Hightown's Chantry Plaza.

Once at the estate, Fenris said :

"I gave Varania instructions to meet me at the Hanged Man tomorrow. I trust that you will be there."

Then he left. Despite her earlier encounter with the Knight Commander of Kirkwall's Templars, Beth's heart felt light.

The man she had waited for all her life and suddenly lost was coming back and he was protecting her.

She fell asleep with her hand sticky and her head full of dreams. In all those scenarios, Fenris kissed and then ravished her.

* * *

The templar was not gentle in his examining. When she breathed in louder in an attempt to shut her mouth before it got her in more trouble, she received a gauntleted hand in her face.

"It seems that she was bonded. It's faded, though..."

"I say make her Tranquil anyway. Dominaters are a plague upon this world..."

Bethany broke. The prodding, magical and physical had left her drained. She would not become Tranquil. No, she couldn't.

Let me in. Let me in, Bethany. You'll show them how strong you are.

It hadn't stopped, it had not relented. It had bade its time.

You're not helpless, you're not a child. You don't need protection.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" Bethany suddenly yelled forgetting the templars threatening to cut her off from herself. Well, at least if they thought she was about to turn into an abomination, they'd kill her.

She'd rather have Fenris do it so she could see his eyes again.

When she closed hers, she saw them. The burning desire in the green irises told her that it was again another trick.

"Kill me." She whispered to the templar closest to her.

He almost looked sad.

"You resisted well, My Lady. You're going to be at the Maker's side soon." He said softly before he rose his sword.


	14. Chapter 14

It was a nightmare. A nightmare. Why did he bring Bethany here? She was lying on the floor, choking on dark magics. Marian was keeping shades at bay and Anders and Justice were glowing while Isabela (of all people) was taking care of more worldly threats such as Danarius' human goons.

Fenris yelled in anger. The sight of Bethany, trapped in whatever spell Danarius' had woven around the apostate, made his rage burn even harder. A lyrium ghost, seething with the anger of two men, phased and blinked into every spell and every thorax in his way toward the Magister.

Danarius' barrier didn't break, it exploded on contact, but it wasn't the explosion's force that blasted him on the wall, it was an elf. A very angry elf.

Without a word, he phased his arm into his neck and snapped his vertebrae from the inside. He then proceeded to beat the body into a pulp until the abomination, once again looking like a human being, yelled at him, begging for help.

Bethany.

* * *

The templar was not gentle in his examining. When she breathed in louder in an attempt to shut her mouth before it got her in more trouble, she received a gauntleted hand in her face.

"It seems that she was bonded. It's faded, though..." The bad one said.

"I say make her Tranquil anyway. Dominaters are a plague upon this world..." Another, nicer looking, answered.

Bethany broke. The prodding, magical and physical had left her drained. She would not become Tranquil. No, she couldn't.

Let me in. Let me in, Bethany. You'll show them how strong you are.

It hadn't stopped, it had not relented. It had bade its time.

You're not helpless, you're not a child. You don't need protection.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" Bethany suddenly yelled forgetting the templars threatening to cut her off from herself. Well, at least if they thought she was about to turn into an abomination, they'd kill her.

She'd rather have Fenris do it so she could see his eyes again.

When she closed hers, she saw them. The intense worry in the moss green irises gave her hope. Was he coming to save her from this place?

"Kill me." She whispered to him.

The nicer templar had a look of incomprehension on his face and a lyrium imbued arm sticking out of his chest.

"She was mine" the Sloth demon whispered before it vanished, along with his illusion, into the Fade.

Bethany couldn't believe it. It was him… He was there, tall and lanky, white hair and green eyes making her melt in a puddle of relief and gratitude. How...

"Varania and Anders enhanced the bond to transport me into the Fade." He answered.

Before he could say "Hold tight", Beth was already hugging him.

When her eyes opened, she was in Varric's suite at the Hanged Man.


	15. Chapter 15

When she opened her golden eyes, Fenris could breathe at last. Something he had somehow forgotten to do once he had followed Varania's instructions and held on Bethany's avatar in the Fade to make them leave the cursed place… Bethany's eyes had remained closed for an agonizingly slow minute and then they had opened. Now he could deal with the fact that he was hanging on the thread of her breath, because she was breathing calmly and her eyes never left his.

His had to move, though. Fenris had unfinished business with the red haired elf next to him. He looked at this woman. He was calm now, he could see the features that mirrored his. Their straight nose, their green eyes and the raised eyebrow. The man gave his place to Marian who was very glad to assure herself of her little sister's well being. Fenris was now standing and staring down at his so-called sister. They were almost the same height, he had maybe half an inch on her. Her eyes looked at him with undisguised curiosity.

"The way you're looking so much like each other is extremely creepy. As if you were his evil twin or something." Isabela commented.

"We are twins." Varania supplied, icily.

"Definitely creepy." Varric then concluded.

Just like the silence that fell onto the room. Marian was hugging her sister, Anders was sipping on a Lyrium potion, trying to regain the strength he'd lost helping Varania enhancing the magic that bound Fenris and Bethany. Merrill was looking at the twins looking lost and Sebastian was looking uneasy as well. Only then Fenris realised that Varania and him had realised that they looked as if they were just about to rip each other's throats. No wonder they all thought he was going to spray the whole tavern with the blood of the red headed woman. His twin. The silence stretched.

Varania finally lowered her gaze back onto the woman with the eyes made of gold. She was letting herself be coddled by her older sister.

"So it is she. Bethany Hawke." she whispered. Her features softened. A sadness mixed with weariness took possession of her whole body. "You got a whipping for asking what it meant." she added.

Fenris' throat tightened and he felt as if he was back in the courtyard.

Isabela muttered something about the Blooming Rose and took Merrill and Sebastian's shoulders, telling them how it would be fun to see the whores. Thankfully, the Chantry Brother didn't say anything about it as Varric gave Anders a nudge. They both left while Marian stayed, hugging Bethany with one arm, the other fiddling with her axe on her lap.

"They searched for her." Varania said, her voice building in strength. "So they could give her her rightful gift. Of course, they never found her, like so many others. Since you no longer belonged to our master, though, you had to leave. Mother was devastated."

The sound of tears that were shed decades ago rang in her voice with a rage.

"That's how you became a Gladius. There was only the arena left for a Servux without a Dominater."

The sand of the arena was so hot it burnt Leto's feet. His skin was already blistering under the unyielding Minrathous sun… The blonde elfwoman impaled on his polearm, a silver scar forming a name engraved on her left breast.

Fenris shook the memory from his head with a forceful wink of both his eyelids.

"The chance to have a purpose, the chance to live. You fought, Leto. You fought for those markings and used the tournament's boon to free Mother and I… But freedom is no boon for two elven liberati with no clothes on their backs and no bread to feed them."

The last sentence was spat with condescension and spite born of years of simmering hate.

"I trained myself alone in the art of magic until Mother died. Only then I could find a proper job. No one wanted to employ an old senile woman." she added.

She was on the verge of it, the twisted smile on her lips the telltale sign of an imminent crisis of hysterical laughter.

"I begged for a name to appear on my chest. That would have meant a status. A free servant and some coin to house us, but chance wasn't with me. It was always you. Lucky Leto, the slave who likes whipping so much he laughs when he hears wood crack in a fire."

"Why did you betray me?" Fenris managed to ask, despite his constricted throat.

"Danarius offered me an apprenticeship if I played the part as he wished." Varania explained, her smile dying as soon as she heard his voice. "I knew it more probable that he'd kill me and throw me in a ditch somewhere than do that, but finding out who is the monster wearing my brother's face was a better promise than stinging my fingers with needles all day and washing my cunt with a potion every night." she added.

Fenris didn't know what to say. He didn't know what he expected, really. Heartfelt confession? Well, somehow he got it. His past had unravelled before his eyes, the remains of it wearing a nicely tailored but used servant's outfit and watching him with wariness and anguish. He looked at Bethany in her sister's arms. The solution was there, just before his eyes. So he tried, he tried harder to be the man he wished to be. A man that chose to embrace everything thrown at him and endure.

"I… I didn't like whippings. I… It was the transgression… I think. It's still… Blurry."

Varania's eyes fixed his, staring at his very soul, looking for her long lost brother.

"Danarius said you wouldn't remember…" she whispered.

"Bethany and I… awoke the bond and the memories. The only thing that stays so far when… When the memories come and go… Well, this memory stays. It's cinnamon cookies and a red haired little girl."

Varania suddenly glowed, the surprise etched onto her face. She started to cry, Marian left the room, Bethany sat up and Fenris was looking at her as Leto hugged his sister.


	16. Chapter 16

There was an ashen taste to the air, Bethany thought. When she started to say something, a mouth came to silence her.

She smiled into Fenris' mouth. They were happy, she thought. Sebastian insisted they marry properly once. Isabela insisted they share their bedroom once. Bethany's smile grew even wider at the events recollection. The polite nod to the Prince-Priest and the threatening glare to the Freewoman. They already had the bond anyway. It felt wonderful. Their thoughts were the same, their movements completed each other's the few times they shared a battlefield. It was as if a missing limb had grown back and…

There was the missing limb, she thought as they made love. The morning was bright, the day was starting wonderfully well. Until the explosion.

Then it was as if the door to the Black City had opened and whole new kind of Blight had started.

The explosion shook the whole building and made them jump from each other as if they'd suddenly caught fire. The walls were still shaking from the after shock even after they hastily put on some clothes.

The air was perfumed with the scent of ashes now, even inside the Hawke's estate. It made Bethany cringe. When they stepped outside the house, they could see the destruction, the bodies. A pile of fuming rubble had replaced the Chantry. There were wails and cries.

Bethany stood there and tried to understand.

Fenris touched her hand briefly and she snapped out of this state of shock she was in.

"We have to help." Bethany suddenly said.

"I will remain at your side." Fenris assured.

A few hours ago, Marian had been summoned to the Gallows to deal with another dispute between Orsino and Meredith. Bethany was very happy to let her go to the Gallows with Merrill, Varric, Aveline and Sebastian. Now she was worried and Fenris and her were making their way through the chaos very reminiscent of the Qunari invasion two years prior.

Or maybe was it just the way the Docks were full of Templars and Mages battling each other that they had to skirt around. Marian was there, swinging her axe, defending the boat against the Templars. When she saw the elf and her little sister running towards her, she seemed relieved.

Fenris hacked into the last Templars trying to get back into the boat as Bethany used one of Anders' tricks to help them run faster. When they were into the bay, sailing towards the Gallows, she realised what was wrong.

First, Sebastian wasn't here. Then, everybody shied away from Anders who was seating at the ship's bow, his back turned away from the eyes who looked at him suspiciously. Aveline had her sword drawn and looked tense.

"Did something happen to Sebastian?" Bethany asked.

"He left." Marian said.

Bethany felt the strain in her voice. She looked at Varric. She knew he'd spill the story.

"Well… A few months ago, right after the elf and you made up, actually, Anders asked your sister for a favour. Turns out the favour was a big bomb he planted into the Chantry to get the Templars and the Mage to decide if they still agreed on their little bedroom arrangements... So… Choir Boy was pissed, asked Hawke to kill Anders and when she didn't, well he went all mad about reclaiming his throne, raising an army and chasing Blondie…"

"It's a wonder he didn't kill him on the spot." Fenris spat, watching at Anders' back. The possessed mage hadn't moved.

Bethany felt it in her, the anger of her lover. It mixed with her sadness, her disbelief and it made Fenris and her strangely calm, as if their emotions, so different, annulled themselves and made them think more clearly.

"Well, it's a wonder you're not lunging at him with that magical fist of yours…" Isabela said.

"I won't be his ticket to martyrdom." Fenris retorted.

"So… We're defending the mages against Meredith and her men who called out their Right of Annulment over Anders' stupid fireworks that doomed us all." Merrill said with a dry chuckle.

No one believed that the elf was really amused by the situation. The only time Bethany ever heard her use irony was when Marian denied her an artifact from her clan. Aveline hissed at the Dalish's euphemism. Everybody was on edge. Bethany didn't like it.

Marian Hawke… Well, she was strangely silent. Isabela held her hand briefly, making the Hawke elder look a bit more determined. The wind and the enchanted rows carried them fast to the towering building in the middle of the bay. Too fast, Bethany thought. She really disliked the Circle. When she was a child, they had passed the Tower on their way to Lothering, but it was nothing, nothing compared to the aura of darkness The Gallows spread around. She felt how thin the Veil was upon stepping off the boat. A shiver coursed through her as she saw the corpses of Templars and mages. Bile rose to her throat when she spotted the charred form of a twisted abomination.

Marian was leading them as usual and they soon reached a double door the mages had elected to defend. There were about thrity humans and elves, women and men in robes, all being uneasy.

First Enchanter Orsino was an older elf with grey hair and light green eyes. He wore green robes that were stained with blood. It made Bethany shudder as his empty eyes fixed Marian and her party.

"Well… I see you've gathered allies. I trust your judgement when it comes to… Your apostate, Champion." he said, finally focusing on the taller woman.

"Anders chose to deal with the consequences of his actions. I trust he's going to atone." Marian added with a shifty glance toward the blonde mage.

Bethany jumped around to face the door when a great banging noise rang in the large room. She heard the familiar humming of Fenris' marking activating.

"This is our last stand" Orsino yelled. "Behind us are our elders and children. We do not have the luxury of defeat. Everyone in position!"

"Bethany!" Marian yelled. "You're behind us with Anders and Merrill, you keep up alive and the crowd controlled. Fenris, Aveline, we're going to make them taste our steel as the vanguard, nothing gets past us before it's been frozen, ignited or thoroughly stabbed."

Bethany got flashes of a situation similar. Ten years ago, when they had fled their home in Lothering, the Darkspawn had similarly thrown themselves at them with no other purpose than kill them. It brought the same kind of adrenaline, but now she channeled it better. She would not let anyone die like she had let her brother. She thought about Fenris briefly. He was brightly lit with the power of the Lyrium. He was beautiful.

Even covered in blood during one of the brief moment of respite in between the waves of enemies, he was beautiful. She could not help it, she had to kiss him. She couldn't lose him now that everything was finally crystal clear between them. He looked at her, staring at her very sould.

"Bethany. I love you. If there is a future to be had, I will gladly spend the rest of it by your side." he murmured just for the two of them.

Next to her, Marian was having a whole different kind of conversation with Orsino.

"They let us live. WHY?" Orsino yelled. "So we can prove them right in the end, so they don't feel guilty to drown us as infants when our powers manifest…"

His eyes were darting around their casualties. They were high, of course. People he'd known all his life, friends and students.

"Orsino, calm down." Marian said.

"He's not listening, it's too much for him, Hawke." Aveline said, sounding tired too.

"And you know what, maybe they should. Because then, we'd never hurt anybody." Orsino hysterically yelled. "Now, to survive, we have to. We have to prove them right."

Bethany's blood froze in her veins as the First Enchanter of Kirkwall's Circle retrieved a dagger from beneath his robes. Marian raised her axe and all the members of her party did.

"Orsino, don't." Anders just said. "Nothing good can come off it."

"We're dead already." the elf answered. "Quentin was right. When you have the power, you can't not make use of it one day."

"Quentin." Marian squeaked.

"The madman who killed Mum?" Bethany shouted.

Marian's face had turned red and Bethany too was enraged. Was Orsino in cahoots with Quentin all along?

The Hawke sisters marched toward the treacherous man, the one with her axe raised, the other with fire dancing on her fingertips, their faces looking dangerously alike despite the physical differences.

"I dismissed his research. They were too dangerous and indeed they harmed a lot of people." Orsino said, seemingly unfazed by the fact that two very andry woman were threteningly surrounding him, his round blue eyes filled with the madness of the good intentioned murderer. "However, I value my brethren's survival too much not to. It was made necessary by zealots like Meredith. Take it to her now. I'm arming myself."

And at these words, he cut a single tear in his palm with his dagger. Bethany's nose wrinkled at the smell that suddenly rose. The corpses moved. They slowly enveloped Orsino as a lover would embrace his mistress and blood gushed all over the elven mage.

Bethany was aware of the cries pleading her to run. All she could think of when the necromantic abomination scooped her up and shook her was about Fenris. She felt a tug at the bond again. She let go of all her magic, all of herself as she was crushed beneath the stinking huge paw. In her inner eye, she saw a big boy with blue eyes and teeth too big for his little mouth.

Just like Leto found his twin back, she was about to find hers again, she sighed, coughing blood before she fell.

"BETHANY!" Fenris had yelled.

As she was crushed by the monster, he felt the Bond tingle and then the fire. The fire in his veins. He felt like he was going to explode. Fenris couldn't think anymore. He will always wonder if he had imagined Bethany surrendering every magic running in her veins to him, the blazing and cursing elf with tattoos that butchered the abomination Orsino had become. Marian had fell to the ground, Anders was busy trying to heal Bethany, having caught her mangled body. Never had Fenris felt so strong, so powerful. Nothing the monster threw at him managed to wound or even graze him. In the end, he phased his arm into the creature's supposed head and tore another little abomination from it that he impaled on his sword. The big one, he crushed… With his mind.

It was weird, wielding magic all of a sudden. It was strange to have this door that used to be there, slightly ajar thanks to the bond, but now it was burst open and power flooded through it, he could summon fire and ice, he could twist the air around him and bend it to his will.

When the creature was dead, he let his sword fall on the floor with a great clanking noise and fell to his knees. He felt it, the other side of the coin. The whispers. The whispers that assured you that she was okay, that she would live, only if he would let them do it. He looked at Anders's alight silhouette above his beloved. That was the only demon he'd let near her and that was only because he was still half a man. Fenris shook his head. The whispering stayed, but he managed to shut the gateway to the Fade in his head, albeit with difficulty. Numbness took over his body as he limped, exhausted toward Bethany.

"She'll live." Justice boomed. "The Bond you have with her has been made very strong by the hardships you lived through. It saved her. It saved you all."

Marian kneeled next to Fenris.

"Come on. While he heals her, we must still defend the Gallows." she said.

Fenris sighed and took a deep breath. He realised he'd been healed.

He looked at Bethany she breathed better under the abomination's ministration and her eyelids had fluttered. She offered a weak smile that med his heart burst. He followed the elder Hawke in the courtyard.

There was another mad dog to put down.

"Maker, bless those who stand before the wicked and do not falter!"

Fenris made use of the magic as much as he used his sword. In his heart, through the bond, Bethany was guiding him, guiding the power, keeping the demons at bay herself while she should let the healer treat her extensive injuries.


	17. Chapter 17

He understood now why they were called Additus here instead of Servux. They were one, they were fated. He added to her power, she added to his and when Hawke slashed her axe, making Meredith stagger, Fenris impaled his sword in her gut and let loose a terrible wave of lightning magic through it.

He removed the sword from her chest as she cried and burned with the unnatural fire of the red lyrium idol. The Hellish glow only subsided when she melted into a twisted parody of the statues she had sicced on them with her foreign lyrium induced powers.

Knight Captain Cullen gestured to one of his recruits that still breathed when it became clear that the statues wouldn't move anymore and the need to deal with them had passed.

The woman was bleeding heavily, but she stood straight anyway as she walked towards Ser Meredith Stannard and examined her twisted remains. She turned back to her superior and shook her head from left to right. At the same moment, Anders, supporting a pale and worn looking Bethany appeared. Marian hugged her sister carefully. Knight Captain Cullen made his men retreat into a corner of the Gallows courtyard before going to talk with the sisters. Fenris, exhausted still felt the magic trickle gently back to its rightful owner and he silently fell to the ground, managing to stay seated and not to lie down like some corpse.

Bethany joined him and offered her shoulder as a pillow. They stayed there until Marian and Isabela came to collect them in a probably boat.

Fenris slept peacefully in the cabin, dreaming of his beloved, waking up to her lovely face. Someone had managed to salvage the book from the Hawke Estate before they fled. OF Dominater and Bonding… She was reading it lying next to him on the narrow bunk when he woke up.

Later, after a stress relieving lovemaking session, she showed him the words in ancient Arcanum about two bonded Avvar warriors the writer had followed. He assured in thinly veiled words that both wielded magic with equal talent.

"This passage is so… Frustrating." Bethany told him. "The author describes how the Additus was in mortal danger when he was far from his Dominater and suddenly saved himself with an unexplained miracle. I think he thought they were both mages and was scared of the implications, but now I'm not so sure."

"I think we have the proof that everyone is wrong about this." Fenris said.

"It is not a dominant to submissive relationship, indeed, but the meeting of two souls who need to share their burdens." Bethany ended the sentence for him.

Her smile was intoxicating. He thought for one second about the moment he saw her fall to the floor after the necromantic abomination had crushed her…

"Marry me." he suddenly blurted out, stunned at the fact that he had actually uttered these two words.

Bethany's golden eyes grew huge like saucers and he felt her elation, the feeling of complete and utter bliss in her heart and it made him hold her tighter and his mood to grow even more stupidly giddy, even knowing what her answer will be.

"Hmm… Arrgghh… O… Okay!" she managed to stutter, not knowing exactly how to pronounce words she was thinking and radiating.

They stared at each other with smitten looks just before they started to nervously laugh at their ineptitude at anything romantic. They were still laughing when they kissed, their teeth bumping against each other's, but their grins were replaced with contented smile after they thoroughly made love, letting Of Dominater and Bonding fall on the wooden floor of the cabin's floor.

The morning after he had a queasy feeling in his stomach that didn't leave him until they could get back ashore. He dismissed it for a random bout of sea sickness. He used to have them a lot the first time Danarius took him to Seheron. He had beaten the habit out of him quickly.

They docked in Cumberland and she made a fuss about having a Chantry sister coming on the boat to perform the ceremony. She giggled with Isabela and Marian and had Aveline, who had already been married, give her a few more realistic pointers about dress purchasing. Fenris let her be excited for them both until Isabela decided he needed clothes too. Since he was too recognizable, he didn't get off the boat, but the amount of (probably stolen) clothes Varric and Isabela rained down on him was unsettling. He couldn't decide, he didn't want to decide and he certainly didn't want to try anything on with Isabela present.

So here he was, alone in the cabin, hearing Bethany squeal in delight along with her sister and the other women on the shop, trying on clothes with Varric and Donnic, Aveline's husband. It was ridiculous. Why did he ask her in the first place?

He felt the queasy feeling in his stomach again. Like a bad feeling that made him want to puke. It didn't leave him until Bethany was just next to him. Her radiance, her happiness lit up his mood and kept the seasickness at bay. He showed her the outfit he had finally chosen, something, a simple black silk tunic with golden cufflinks.

"It reminded me of your eyes…"

Bethany kissed him.


	18. Chapter 18

She had fussed over things, she knew. She had squealed like a nug being choked by a little girl's hug. She had wanted the most perfect thing she could find in all the stolen-slash-borrowed items Isabela had brought. She had found it : a cream coloured dress with an Orlesian crinoline and a silvery bustier and a simple crown of flowers Merrill was already braiding from flowers she had found Maker knew where.

Bethany didn't want to know exactly how Isabela had found so many items of clothing, who they actually belonged to. She was just busy making the dress actually fit her, it seemed like the woman the dress belonged to had no curves whatsoever. She wondered when her own breasts had grown so fat, she felt like a nursing cow, she thought with a scowl. She pricked her finger with the big needle that was made for patching up sails and sighs as she feels Fenris soaking in such a trivial pain despite the distance.

"Hey." Marian exclaimed from the door.

The elder Hawke sat next to her sister. Bethany showed her the now bleeding thumb she nursed.

"I wish Mum was here." the mage whispered, ironically gesturing at the needle.

It was Mum that taught her children, even Carver, how to sew. Dad could throw fireballs, summon thunderstorm, heal any kind of ailment and put his children to sleep with a spell… But he could not write his name on his socks with a bit of thread and a sharpened piece of chicken bone.

"She'd probably pass out, this robe was decades out of fashion when she married Dad." Marian said.

She took the needle and the thread and helped Bethany finish the deed.

"I never thought any of us would marry." Marian confessed. "I always thought we'd have to protect you for the rest of our lives."

Bethany looked at her sister.

"A few years ago, I asked Fenris to watch over you when I was down in the Deep Roads." she added. "I think it's the best decision I ever took in my life because you're alive, you're happy and I can rest a bit because, without Carver and Dad, this job had become a lot harder."

Bethany hugged her sister.

They unfortunately had to leave Cumberland before they could arrange for a sister to come on the boat to perform the ceremony. Boat with a sunburst sewn into the sails were coming from Orlais. They decided to sail in the same direction as they did toward Rivain. The Chantry's vessels stopped at Kirkwall. Isabela didn't even glance at them and continued her path.

Bethany and Fenris talked about their wishes, their plans.

"I was thinking about writing a book myself about the bond. About what it is to experience it instead of just observing it." Bethany proposed.

"I think it is a good idea." Fenris answered, slowly and carefully.

His seasickness had hit him with a ferocity worthy of a whole platoon of dwarven berserkers. He spent most of the day and the night emptying his stomach on the other side of the rail, refusing to eat anything that had come from the sea. He was thus very wary whenever he had to open his mouth.

"And, since you seem to take all my pain, maybe we could try the other way around?" the mage asked.

Thus, they tried as they could to share burdens. Merrill and Aveline would help by hurting and pinching them or holding a flame near them until one managed to send the feeling to the other on purpose. It worked well. Bethany was then able to take a bit of his seasickness, helping Fenris enjoy the navigation a bit more.

Then, they docked in Ostwick and the very first thing they did, was send Aveline and Donnic to the local Chantry, asking for a sister to perform a wedding ceremony. While Bethany was getting ready, she was completely out of it, wanting it to be as perfect as it could. Well, at least she'd be married, she never thought it'd ever happen. Marian and Isabela had gone and bought flowers for Merrill to weave the bridal crown and Varric was helping Fenris' own nerves, she could feel it in the distance, though they had gotten better at controlling the way they shared through the Bond.

The sister was a burly old woman with white hair and a pair of spectacles on her nose. She was speaking in a loud and clear Starkhaven accented voice and if she was shocked at first when she saw the couple in borrowed clothes, she kept her opinions to herself. Bethany didn't hear the words. She was looking at her gorgeous soon to be husband who was holding her hands and looking at her with green eyes full of love.

"You may kiss the Bride."

Bethany didn't really hear. Fenris didn't either, it seemed.

"ELF!" the Sister yelled. "Kiss your wife!"

Fenris and Bethany woke up and quickly kissed, sheepishly. He then ran to the railing.

"Well, this is the strangest couple I ever wed." the sister stated. "Is he always like this?"

Bethany shivered. She suddenly realised something. Something important. Something huge that made her eyes grow wide like frying pans. She managed to stutter a thank you to the Sister for her service.

"Well, we should really consult a physician… You know… About that seasickness, he's had it since… Hmm… Amaranthine." she stammered.

She had almost said Kirkwall, but it was a forbidden word now.

The Sister left, offering congratulations again. Bethany then came to collect her heaving and panting husband near the railing.


	19. Chapter 19

"So, you're telling me it's not seasickness?" Fenris groaned.

It had taken a full day before Fenris considered speaking to Anders about it. He wanted to make love to Marian all day long but even when they were sharing, the vomiting was so strong that she'd end up blocking the sickness, preferring to take care of him instead of being sick herself. Marian was supervising the exchange at their demand. They still weren't friends, and far from it.

"I think the seasickness is part of it." Anders told him. "I want to examine Bethany, just to be sure. I might be wrong. We know a lot of the cultural implications of the Bond from Of Dominater and Bonding, but not so much of the body who experiences it. I wish Leandra was still alove, she could have enlightened us..."

"What about my Mum?" Marian asked.

"Do you…" Anders started.

He sighed.

"Do you remember when your mother was pregnant with your siblings?" he asked anyway.

"Yes. A little." Marian answered. "It was funny because Dad was always in bed and Mother was always up and even lifting heavy burdens while it was always the other way around. Why?"

"I think Bethany might be pregnant and that she's sending all the…"

Fenris stopped listening. Pregnant. The word echoed in him as if it was bouncing between his ears before it dived into his stomach. Pregnant meant baby. A soft knock on the door snapped him out of his reverie.

"Are you okay?" Bethany asked, her silhouette gorgeous in the doorframe.

"Well, since she's there, I can examine her." Anders said.

Fenris felt tense, he could tell that it was what prompted Bethany's own worry and her arrival. Anders' hand fell on her scalp and Bethany shivered under the cold spell.

"You've gained a bit of weight." Anders noted.

"Yes, I did… Somehow." Bethany said, looking tense.

"Did you notice something unusual… In the past few months?" the mage asked.

Marian suddenly left them alone, claiming that she could wait outside now. Bethany seemed less embarrassed and more cold. Fenris was suddenly felt better now that she seemed to have found some backbone back. He was reassured at the fact that she wasn't feeling uncomfortable with the mage because he scared him but because she didn't want to speak of matters of health in front of her sister.

"Actually I did wanted to tell you… My… Well, my monthlies didn't come. Twice." she said. "And considering… Fenris and my activities..."

She turned her golden eyes at Fenris expectantly and he suddenly remembered that breathing was important. He rushed to her side and put both his hands on her shoulders.

"Am I pregnant?" Bethany asked, suddenly asking bluntly the question, maintaining once more eye contact with the murderer.

"Yes." Anders confirmed. "And Fenris is not seasick, he has your morning sickness and even the tender nipples." Anders added with a sneer.

Fenris agreed that it'd probably be considered funny to some and didn't comment on the obvious and low mockery. This was not something to be ashamed of. He shared with Bethany the joy of giving life to a baby. It scared him shitless, but how elated he was! It made him want to sing, made him trust the future more. He kissed his wife, wanting to take her now and then and worship her womb from inside out.

"Of course, you two lovebirds realise the baby has a lot of chance to become a mage, right?" Anders interrupted.

Fenris grew calmer. A deadly calm sharpened and aimed at Anders. That, he hadn't thought about. Bethany's golden eyes were looking at Fenris, the question lingering in her eyes..

"I won't listen to anything you wish to say about my child, abomination." the elf whispered, his voice sharp as a dagger. "Now leave me with my wife. We must discuss about our plans for our baby." he snarled at the mage.

Anders didn't insist and left the cabin, allowing Fenris to finally lunge at his wife finally.

For an unknown reason, the vomiting stopped. Aveline told them that it was probably because they knew what caused it in the first place.

"When I was pregnant that's exactly what happened to me…" she assured.

"You have a child? How old is he? Or is it a girl?" Merrill started to ask.

"It was still born." Aveline told them, her lips a firm line, but she didn't betray any sadness on her face, she just let Donnic hold her a bit tighter.

Fenris suddenly thought about his years in slavery and Hadriana's things (he refused to call them children) that were cut out from her stomach. He shivered and dismissed the thought. The bitch was dead, the foetuses were used by Danarius. Danarius himself had been burried in the dirt of Kirkwall's sewers instead of burnt properly. He swore not to bring bad luck on his lovely wife and unborn son or daughter so.

Seven months later, they docked in Llomeryn and Fenris had to spend the night farther from the Rivaini sandy coastline in a skiff, accompanied by Donnic and Merrill. They didn't know what would happen. Marian didn't remember her mother giving birth, she was only three and thus had been sent to a neighbour's home.

During seven months, the elf had shared his wife's little pains and given her his strength. But childbirth was another matter than swollen ankles and back pains, Anders had told them. Fenris soon realised that he was right. It didn't really compare to the day he received his markings. He felt the pain of the contractions and they sailed away, leaving Bethany in the boat. Fenris stiffled a groan. He had an excellent pain resistance, he almost managed until the very end of the gruesome day that followed the night her labour started.

"I wish I could do that for Aveline too." Donnic said. "I'm sure she's swearing like mad."

Merrill crystalline little laugh rang.

"There was a woman from the clan that once yelled the most atrocious of our curses so loud the children heard her." she told them. "They repeated it for days on end and even nicknamed the child that. Rh'alga Mathiel." she added in a whisper. The she giggled.

"Shut up." Fenris snapped, his brow sweaty and his mood particularly foul when blood mages, albeit naive ones, were involved.

She stiffled the next giggles, but resumed the game of cards they played to pass the time. Donnic was filled with worry upon seeing Fenris suffering for his wife and asked him a lot about the pain. Fenris answered in short sentences made of equally short words.

The pain subsided and Fenris just knew it was over because hisheart was full to the brim with his wife's happiness and relief.

"Bethany is over." he said, suddenly feeling as excited as he was exhausted.

Donnic and Merrill rowed as he finally relaxed his tense muscles. On the boat, Isabela was opening casks of rum with her crew while one of the pirates played the fiddle.

Aveline waited for them with a big bundle in her arms. Donnic rushed to embrace his newly growing family.

"Fenris." Aveline called, giving her baby to Donnic.

The woman was unrecognizable with her hair down and the circle beneath her eyes. Her throat was probably raw with the screaming.

"You should get in the cabin now." she said her face the careful mask of the Guard Captain who had dire news to tell, showing him the way.

Fenris couldn't help but notice that she didn't have the same gait anymore and he already saw her in a dress at her wedding, so it probably wasn't the change in garments. Anything but thinking that Bethany and their child was in danger.

Marian was covered in blood next to the bed as was Anders. It was no the seasickness that made Fenris want to puke but the idea that this blood was Bethany's. Aveline retreated from the room.

"Twins!" he heard a small voice attempt to yell from the bed.

Her golden eyes were open and she had a tiny infant at her breast. Her hair was matted on her forehead from the exertion, probably. Fenris had taken the pain, but it was still Bethany's and their child's muscles that did all the work.

"Twins." Fenris repeated.

"And the little demons were hard to catch." Anders snarled from the linen covered desk where he was still hunched, his hands aglow with light.

"The first one is okay, but the little one…" Marian said…

Fenris took a sharp breath before he approached the bureau and his heart churned at the sight. The infant Bethany was feeding was little but pink and hale. This one was stark white and had big red eyes and frighteningly blue lips.

"Don't worry, she's not choking. It's something else. I think your lyrium or the bond did this to her." Anders said.

Rage and memories overtook him. Frozen on the spot, he saw Hadriana's round belly and the misshapen forms Danarius cut out from the womb all white skin and red veins.

"Fenris." Bethany called.

Only then did he realise he was crying. Bethany extended her arm and Fenris rolled himself in her.

"Meet your daughter here." Bethany said. "You remember the names we had picked, right?"

Fenris nodded. He was looking at his daughter, mesmerized by her chubby hands and her lips locked on her mother's tit.

"Sylve for a girl and Malcolm for a boy." Bethany repeated.

Fenris nodded again. Cautiously, he extended his finger and touched his child's blunted eartip. She immediately started to whine softly. The elf removed his hand as if touching the child had burned him.

"Well… For now, this one is Sylve." Bethany whispered. "I've been calling her that for now."

"That's what we agreed upon anyway."

"I want to name the other too… I'm sure she'll be okay."

Fenris throat was still constricted.

"I'm sorry, I can't. Not when I'm not sure she's…"

Bethany smiled. She understood. She kissed him.

Hours later, Anders sighed and threw his back on the back of the chair.

"Finally! Maker bless this odd dwarf!" he yelled.

"What happened? Does she live?" Fenris interrogated him.

"Yes." Anders told him. "It wasn't easy, but I managed. Oh… Sandal, what a weird bugger."

"What does Sandal have to do with anything." Fenris snarled at the mage with a scowl.

"He gave me that rune when we left the Gallows." Anders answered, showing the expended rune. "He told me it was for the nice lady's baby. That's the reason why I knew Bethany was pregnant in the first place." he said, giving into hysterical laughter.

Fenris' blood turned cold as he watched his second daughter finally looking a healthy shade of pink, though her eyes still looked red. Her lips retained their bluish colour, but she was breathing peacefully as if she slept.

"What have you done to her?" Fenris asked.

"Exactly the same thing Danarius did to prevent lyrium intoxication." Anders answered. "Any mage can feel it, despite the enchantment's age, but the rune is there, except that in your case, it's carved in your forehead. I couldn't do that with our tiny friend and I'm a lousy enchanter."

He took the girl in his arms and carefully presented the bundle towards Fenris. The elf was trembling so he exceptionally let Anders steady his arms.

"I made her a kind of bracelet with the rune." Anders explained. "Once she reaches adulthood, you should consider finding Sandal and have him enchant her forehead too. You can lose jewelry. It can be stolen…"

"Are you suggesting…"

"That you save your daughter's life when she's capable to endure the pain without dying?" Anders interrupted sharply. "Yes. I'd do anything if she was my daughter to save her life."

Fenris shut his mouth. The girl in his arms yelled. Fenris brought her to Bethany and the girl sucked on the breast hungrily while the new mother handed Sylve to him.


	20. Chapter 20

The group fell apart there. Aveline wanted to raise Roderick in Orlais near her father's birthplace in Val Chevin. Marian and Isabela wanted to sail away, but Bethany wanted to put down some roots in Rivain. She liked the weather, the Chantry' influence was tenuous and some of their mages still roamed free and were revered in secret. Of course, Fenris agreed that they couldn't raise twins on the run. Anders promised to stay in touch concerning Lea's health but that he wouldn't risk their safety. Merrill wanted to go to Ferelden and get in touch with city elves to start a new clan. Varric was returning to the civilization he missed.

Bethany missed the man that should have conducted her wedding ceremony.

"Maybe we can move to Starkhaven in a few years, once we're sure the girls are okay." Fenris proposed. "First of all because Sebastian will believe us when we say we don't know about Anders whereabouts in ten years."

"And secondly because the girls will run all over the place when they'll be ten."

Fenris caressed the white hair that was growing on Lea's head. Bethany frowned at the gesture. She knew he felt guilty but he had no reason to be. She could have talked to a wall whenever she tried to make him realise that, though.

She smiled at the tiny three room house they made far inland and rubbed her newly rounded belly. She hoped she wouldn't give birth to twins again. She was happy. Until she heard two girly shouts that didn't sound like amused shrieks.

Two eight year old were looking at each other, bewildered. One was golden eyed with jet black hair, her delicately tanned olive skin the only clue that Fenris had anything to do with her conception at all and she stood taller than her white haired twin with the purple lips and the grey and red eyes contrasting with her marble coloured albino skin.

They suddenly looked at their mother and clutched their chests. Bethany's own heart jumped high.

"Follow me." Bethany said.

She retrieved a newly bound leather book that still smelled of the many products she had used to smooth the skin and make it shine. She looked at the title she had given it and smiled at the empty pages she had thought to leave if such case arose.

The smile disappeared when she saw her daughters comparing the marks on each others chests.

Bethany sighed and gave them _Marked as My Equal_.

* * *

Thank you for reading. This is two kink meme fills in one that ate my lifeforce until I finished it. I intend to write a sequel named (Oh, surprise!) _Marked as My Equal _but it won't come until a very very very very long time. I just want to explore the soulbond stuff.

Have a nice day American folks, I'm so tired I'd sleep through a Blight.


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